Hybrid
by Raberba girl
Summary: When Valka is carried off by Cloudjumper, baby Hiccup is taken as well. He grows up in the alpha Bewilderbeast's icy Sanctuary, eventually returning to Berk as a teenager who's more dragon than human. This is a series of related vignettes that will NOT be posted in chronological order.
1. Introduction (theme 1)

Hybrid

A DreamWorks' _How to Train Your Dragon_ fanfic series by Raberba girl

List of themes by AngieChild, Variation 1 for the 100ThemesChallenge group on DeviantArt

_Dedicated to Nightquesttarja &amp; Le'letha_

Summary: When Valka is carried off by Cloudjumper, baby Hiccup is taken as well. He grows up in the alpha Bewilderbeast's icy Sanctuary, eventually returning to Berk as a teenager who's more dragon than human. This is a series of related ficlets that will NOT be posted in chronological order.

Introduction: I put up a poll on my FFN profile about common fanfic plots in the HTTYD fandom. After voting, Nightquest PMed me to reiterate his request for a "Cloudjumper takes baby Hiccup along with Valka" fic, though I didn't think I'd be able to actually write it at first. Soon after that was when I learned that even if Le'letha does ever write a fic I requested of her (an AU of her story _Nightfall_ where Valka is able to bring hybrid Hiccup back to Berk when he's old enough), it definitely won't be soon. It occurred to me that I could try writing my own version of it, and it would combine nicely with Nightquest's request.

This fic ought to be a multi-chapter, but I do not currently have the lifestyle/time/energy/discipline to be able to write proper multi-chaptered fanfiction. The only way this story will get written and posted at all is if I do it in my dumb messy non-chronological bits-and-pieces way. :/

I've learned from past experience that theme challenges help give a little bit of structure to my disorganized writing. The Kingdom Hearts fandom has tons and tons of theme challenges, but I couldn't find any for HTTYD, so I turned again to the 100ThemesChallenge group on DeviantArt, which isn't bound to any one fandom. I already started working on their Variation 3, mostly for Kingdom Hearts stories, but I figured I could devote a different Variation list to this story, _Hybrid_. I chose Variation 1 because its themes seem the most suitable overall, though there are a few themes from the other Variations that I'll use as substitutes. I don't expect to ever actually finish the challenge (100 themes is A LOT *sweatdrop*, and I still haven't finished any of the theme challenges I started for Kingdom Hearts the past few years), but at least even just attempting it will still get me somewhere.

**Since Le'letha already wrote the "Valka raising Hiccup in the Sanctuary" idea so well, **_**Hybrid**_** is heavily influenced by her story **_**Nightfall**_**, particularly the flashback chapter from Valka's perspective. I'm not going to attempt to re-do any of the stuff that she's already done perfectly. The main differences are Toothless's backstory/family, the fact that Valka's still around as Hiccup grows up, and that I'll be using my own headcanon for dragon culture and stuff. (And I'm not even going to **_**attempt**_** to write dragon language the way Letha does. XD It's brilliant, but I can't replicate it.)**

**Introduction (theme 1) [rough draft]**

They found a sunny hilltop where they could rest for lunch. Valka settled comfortably beside Cloudjumper and worked on her map, as two-year-old Hiccup crouched over the piece of paper she had given him and scribbled on it with a charcoal pencil. She was fairly certain that the scribbles were landforms, because when he said "Mama!" to get her attention and held up his work, he pointed out at the distant mountain.

"Is that the mountain, Hiccup?" she said encouragingly. He babbled a sound that could have been 'mountain.' "What are these things here?" she asked, her fingers skimming above some other scribbles.

Hiccup pointed again, then fluttered his hands in a clumsy baby way and made a humming sound. "The trees? The mist?"

"Tree. Zzzzz."

She was about to ask, only half-playfully, if 'zzzzz + fluttering' was Dragonese for 'mist,' when Hiccup's attention abruptly shifted. He went stock-still, staring hard at the tree line, and then she realized that Cloudjumper on her other side was doing the same.

There were dragon eyes in the shadows. Valka immediately snatched up her child and started to scramble to her feet, but the hidden dragon gave a light growl of warning, and Cloudjumper nudged her. She slowly sank down again, holding Hiccup tightly.

"Let go," he complained, squirming. She didn't answer, fixated on the newcomer.

The dragon began to slink into the light, turning its (his?) face away from the sun with a wince. He was smaller than Cloudjumper and his hide was completely black. His wings extended from his shoulders, unattached to his forelegs, and he walked an all fours and had broad tail fins. Valka didn't recognize the breed, but that was nothing new by now.

The dragon, circling around to approach in a way that kept the Stormcutter between himself and the humans, rumbled to Cloudjumper, though he was staring at Valka. He barely seemed to be able to take his eyes off her as he and Cloudjumper sniffed at each other and spoke quietly.

"Black! Touch him!"

"No, Hiccup, sshh," Valka said quickly. The boy squirmed and complained, each sound prompting the black dragon to uneasily twitch the ear-like plates on his head. "Don't scare the dragon, Hiccup."

"Scared?" Hiccup went still for a minute. Then he collapsed in his mother's arms, so suddenly that she lost her hold on him and he slithered to the ground. He lay sprawled on his back with his chin lifted so he could watch the dragon upside-down, and made a placating sort of whimper.

The dragon snorted and backed up a few steps, eyes wide as he stared at Hiccup.

Valka managed to scoop up the child again, but he fought her even more than before. "Let go, Mama!"

"What did you do?!"

"Tell him-!" Hiccup made the whimper again as if it was part of the same sentence.

The dragon whined and crouched low as he crept back into the trees.

"Scared," Hiccup said sadly.

"We're going home." Valka packed up quickly and strapped Hiccup back into his sling. "Come on, Cloudjumper."

"Alpha yes home dragons," Hiccup said, sounding happier, then made a dragonish purring sound which Cloudjumper responded to.

Valka was in too much of a hurry to ask what in the world he was talking about.

o.o.o.o.o

They returned home to the Sanctuary, where Valka bustled about the cavern she had turned into a house of sorts, getting everything settled after their trip. She hadn't finished before she noticed Hiccup excitedly hopping and chirping at one of the ledges outside.

"Hiccup! What have I told you about being so close to the edge?!" After he was safely in her arms, she looked up at what had so captured his attention, and was surprised to see the same black dragon from earlier. He appeared to be in conversation with the king, wings casually folded and eyes wide as he rumbled and barked.

There was a moment when both turned to look down at the two humans. "Black!" Hiccup greeted happily. Valka held him a little closer, staring back at the dragons.

The black dragon made a friendly sound back at Hiccup. He and the king resumed looking at each other, appeared to have a final exchange, then the black dragon dipped his head and flew away.

"Coming~"

"What do you mean, 'coming'? Who's coming?"

"Black, Black," then Hiccup continued in a series of purrs and chirps and growls that must have been dragon language.

"Use human words, Hiccup. Black is that dragon? Did he give a warning, is someone else coming?"

Hiccup frowned at her, then pointed to a little dragon family who had been nesting close to them since the female had laid her eggs. Valka couldn't make sense of whatever Hiccup was trying to tell her, or understand what their neighbors had to do with the black dragon.

Just when she decided to give up, Hiccup's face brightened. "Black!"

"Again?" She looked. Sure enough, there was the black dragon again, this time with a companion of the same breed. Hiccup toddled over to Cloudjumper and grabbed at him eagerly. The Stormcutter gave an indulgent squawk, then lowered himself in an invitation to mount. "Hold on, Hiccup, I'm coming." Valka scooped up her son and settled into place on Cloudjumper, who soared up to the ledge where the newcomers were.

Valka guessed that the second dragon was female - her head plates were a different shape, and as she lay full-length on the ground in an exhausted sprawl, two of her hatchlings peeped insistently at her and kept nudging at her mouth, probably demanding food.

Her mate sat nearby, leaning down to lick a third hatchling who was crying more loudly than its siblings. As soon as Valka approached, the hatchling shrieked and stumbled closer to its father. The dragon repositioned his forepaws protectively and gave Valka a serious look, as if acknowledging that she was probably not a threat but wanting to be careful anyway.

"Black, black, black~!" Hiccup cried, straining eagerly toward the hatchling. Perhaps he meant it as a description for their breed rather than an actual name. They were, after all, the first solid black dragons he and Valka had seen.

"Be careful, Hiccup. He's frightened."

"Scared. Sssshhh." Hiccup went quiet, though he still stared intently at the hatchling. As soon as Valka let him go, he curled into a little ball. The two babies watched each other. Hiccup finally started crawling toward the other almost flat on his belly, taking no heed of the adult dragon who leaned down to sniff him from head to foot as he passed.

The hatchling gave a wary peep. Hiccup chirped back. The little dragon suddenly pounced, forepaws landing square on Hiccup's back-

Valka's mouth was open to cry out, but she was surprised when the father dragon snarled at his own son. The hatchling cowered back, whimpering. Hiccup craned over his shoulder to look at his own back, then peeped encouragingly at the hatchling. After a moment, the hatchling slunk toward him on its belly, very similarly to how Hiccup had first approached it.

The two babies sniffed at each other for a minute. Hiccup soon wrinkled his nose and complained, "No smell?" with a frustrated look, but the hatchling continued to investigate him eagerly. As Hiccup submitted to this, he looked over at his mother to ask, "Mama, no smell?"

"I don't know what he smells like, Hiccup. You're closer to him than I am."

Hiccup sighed and looked back at the hatchling, who finished its examination and came back to lie down partially on top of him. Hiccup seemed perfectly amenable to this arrangement.

"Is he heavy, Hiccup?"

Hiccup chirred at her in an unconcerned way.

"Say yes or no, Hiccup. Is he too heavy? Yes or no?"

Hiccup gave her an annoyed look, but finally said, "No."

The black dragon gave the two children one last look, then rumbled at Valka and, to her surprise, walked away. He stopped by the other two hatchlings and regurgitated some fish for them, which they eagerly pounced on, and nudged at his mate. She opened her eyes and gave a low growl, but otherwise didn't move. He licked her face and moved on to a shadowed patch of mossy rock, which he scorched with an alarmingly white-hot blaze of fire.

_'If _that's_ what he uses to prepare a bed, what does it look like when he's fighting?!'_ Valka wondered in alarm as she watched.

The dragon returned to his mate and nudged her until she dragged herself to her feet. She trudged over to the bed and collapsed on it, quickly followed by her two sated hatchlings, who snuggled up against her.

The father dragon then came for his remaining child. With one eye on Valka, he reached for his third hatchling and picked it up, ignoring its sleepy complaints. Valka nodded to him as she leaned down to reclaim her own sleepy child. "Mama," Hiccup whined, and made a purring sound as if it was a word rather than an indication of mood. "Mama!" he insisted when she didn't answer.

"Did you make a new friend?"

Hiccup reached in the hatchling's direction insistently.

"You can play with him again later, Hiccup, but right now you need a nap."

Hiccup made the purr again, then resorted to, "Black! Little Black!" when she didn't respond.

"Later, Hiccup. Later."

o.o.o

Author's Notes: I cannot promise quick or regular updates for this! I have other, much more important stories to be working on; I'll probably only pick at this series when I have enough inspiration and time to work on it.

Btw, feel free to make requests for ficlets set in this universe. I can't promise I'll write them, but it may help me with any themes I get stuck on, or to flesh out blank segments I don't have ideas for.

I'd kind of wanted to stick these ficlets into an already existing series like "Proper Appreciation (and other stories)," but my readers unanimously voted for me to post this series as a separate story instead. XD

I know that HiccStrid fans often ask if there will be HiccStrid in fics like this. At the moment, I can't say anything for certain except that romance is not the purpose of this fic. _If_ Hiccup &amp; Astrid end up together (I have no idea yet whether they will or not), romance is not going to get much screentime. There will be lots and lots of _platonic_ HiccTooth, but if you've read any of my other HTTYD fanfiction, you already knew that. XD

Complete: 1/100


	2. Gray (theme 19)

_**Hybrid: **__**Gray**_** (theme ****19****) [rough draft]****, a DreamWorks' **_**How to Train Your Dragon**_** fanfic series by Raberba girl**

**List of themes**** by ****AngieChild****, Variation 1 for the 100ThemesChallenge group on DeviantArt**

A/N: I want Tooth's father's name to be something like, 'person who can catch fish even from under the ice' and/or 'crazy person who'd fly out in an ice storm to rescue someone,' but I haven't settled on the official renderings. Probably Icefisher when it's a human addressing / referring to him, and Ice Hunt when it's a dragon.

I'm also having a small problem with dragon language in this fic. In my other stories, the characters speak either Norse or Dragonese, not both at the same time; but Hiccup here sometimes combines the two languages, and I haven't settled on the best way to indicate that.

o.o.o

It probably would have taken Valka and Ice Hunt longer to fully trust each other if their sons hadn't expedited the process. It wasn't long before the human child and the nightwing hatchling were regularly curling up together to nap in the same aerie - usually Valka's, since Toothless's mother was much slower to tolerate any proximity to a human, even a baby one.

Valka had named the hatchling 'Toothless' due to his completely bare gums. It wasn't until later that his mother allowed Valka close enough to the other hatchlings for her to discover that they, too, had no teeth yet. Toothless himself began to answer to the name, and even Icefisher - as Valka had named his father when she witnessed the black dragon diving for lunch one day - seemed to recognize that the sound referred to his smallest child.

Hiccup referred to his little friend with a particular purring sound that Valka in turn came to recognize, so much so that she realized one day that she hadn't heard Hiccup attempt to say the name 'Toothless' in weeks.

Valka didn't see too much of the nightwing mother or the two bigger hatchlings at first - they seemed to spend most of their time sleeping, and the mother especially kept her distance. It was Toothless who constantly sought (and was sought by) Hiccup, with his father hovering protectively in the background. Although Valka enjoyed seeing the children play together, it worried her how much more Hiccup seemed to sleep during the day, and how much more active he was at night. She lost count of the times she would start awake in the darkness and find no sign of her son.

By the time she finally realized that the black dragons must be of a nocturnal breed, the boys had adjusted to each other, sleeping during roughly half the day and night rather than claiming all of one or the other. Valka and Ice Hunt had to trust each other with guardianship duties, if for no other reason than to get enough sleep themselves.

Valka wondered uneasily sometimes if the atypical sleeping schedule was somehow bad for Hiccup. Why _were_ some creatures nocturnal, anyway, if sleeping during the night was supposed to be the 'normal' way of things? Did it matter _when_ Hiccup slept as long as he got the same _amount_ of sleep?

These worries were eclipsed one week when Hiccup started to vomit every day, and his tongue took on a strange gray tint. He seemed well enough after he'd thrown up whatever had made him sick, but the frequency of it was taking its toll on him physically, and his recovery time was taking longer. "Hiccup, what have you been _eating_?!"

"Not bad!"

"Hiccup, you've been _eating something_ that's making you sick. What is it? You need to _stop_."

"Not eating bad!"

She stayed awake long enough to see for herself, and finally discovered the problem. A horrified corner of her mind wanted to blame Ice Hunt for allowing such a thing, though the more rational part reminded her that he wouldn't have recognized it as a problem at all. A dragon would view social grooming as perfectly ordinary and harmless.

"HICCUP! What are you _doing_, don't _lick_ him, are you-?! Stop it!"

Hiccup gave her an injured look, and squirmed to get down. Toothless had reared up, resting his forepaws on Valka's leg as he anxiously croaked up at his friend.

"Hiccup! Hiccup, listen to me, you must _not_ lick the dragons, do you understand? Don't lick Toothless!"

"[Friend] mine," Hiccup protested.

"That's why you're getting _sick_, Hiccup! He's covered with, with dirt, and who knows what else, if you lick him like that then you'll keep getting sick! Do you _like_ throwing up?"

"No," he said sulkily.

"No licking, Hiccup."

"..."

"_No licking_."

"[Friend] mine," Hiccup whimpered, tears welling up in his eyes. "[Friend] _mine_!"

"What's yours? Toothless is yours? Hiccup, you don't have to lick him to prove that you're friends! We _know_ you care about each other, we can all see that!"

Hiccup just cried without saying anything. Toothless was starting to cry now, too, so Valka knelt to stroke him. The little dragon ignored her soothing fingers and pressed his face into the closest part of Hiccup he could reach.

"Hiccup, listen to me. It's bad for you to lick animals like that. It's bad for your body, you don't feel good and then you can't play with Toothless. We _know_ that you and Toothless are friends, Hiccup, you don't have to make yourself sick trying to prove that, do you understand?"

Hiccup murmured heartbrokenly to Toothless, who started to lick him in response. Hiccup gave his mother a defiant look.

Valka sighed. "It's okay for _him_ to lick you, because he's a dragon, he won't get sick. But _you_ are human, Hiccup, and it's not good for you."

Hiccup stared at her. "Dragon?"

Valka felt a pang of fear. "You are not a dragon, Hiccup. You are a _human_. Dragons are our friends that we love, but you and I are human beings."

"Dragon? Dragon...?!"

He seemed to be frightened and clingy for hours after that, refusing to be parted from either his mother or his best friend. Valka kept him close and tried to distract him with lessons disguised as games. It worked a little bit, but it wasn't until Cloudjumper took him to the king for a long talk that the boy truly seemed to relax.

_'Is this really for the best,'_ Valka thought uneasily, _'raising him here?'_ Then again, would Hiccup be better off in that war-torn village, or here in this peaceful refuge? _'I won't let him forget who he is. He is the son of Stoick the Vast, the hope and heir of our tribe, and I will raise him here so that he may know peace and someday bring it back to his true home.'_

o.o.o.o.o

The sensation of a tongue steadily swiping across his skin and clothes awakened Hiccup. He lay sadly, letting himself be claimed, unable to return the gesture. _"Sad, confused, lost,"_ he told Toothless. _"Not the same as you?"_

_"Mine,"_ Toothless told him determinedly as he worked.

Hiccup sat up, reaching out to touch his friend's black scales. He hadn't known or cared much about why he'd been getting sick recently, but now, the knowledge of its cause weighed heavily on his heart. _"Friend? My friend that I love?"_

_"Mine, mine, mine,"_ Toothless purred.

Hiccup's hands fisted in frustration. How was he supposed to return the claim? It had been hard enough already, having such a tiny tongue that took _so long_ to finish the task, and the taste of dragon hide would seem to cloy in his mouth after a while, making it even more difficult - and then, after all that, the other dragons would respond to his painstakingly applied marks with more confusion than recognition. But now he wasn't even allowed to mark his friend at _all_!

Hiccup grabbed the dragon's head and licked - not much, just a little patch of forehead. He hugged Toothless tightly and insisted, "Mine, mine, mine, mine," as if he could say with his arms and his voice what he was unable to say with scent.

It seemed that he had unintentionally discovered a compromise. A token scent-mark was better than nothing, he could do it quickly and stealthily enough that his mother didn't notice, and he stopped getting sick.

o.o.o

Author's Notes: This ficlet was supposed to be that last small section and maybe a couple of sentences of explanation; I don't know where the rest came from. *sweatdrop*

So, I asked hybrid Hiccup about his sex life in this universe. He told me, and after I'd wandered down that path for a while, I went back and closed it off and decided to just make him asexual, sorry. Because if he's not ace, then he'd go mate with Camicazi in a plot thread that I'm pretty sure is against my religion and gets too off-topic and would require the creation of _yet more_ Fan Characters (I've already made way too many DX), so I decided it's just easier and better if I make him asexual. Hiccup will not be romantically paired with anyone in this universe.

I've been thinking about this AU a lot, and it's developing a LOT differently than how I'd imagined it ._. I'm kind of nervous about where it's going.

Complete: 2/100


	3. Annoyance (theme 69)

_**Hybrid: Annoyance**_** (theme ****69****) [rough draft]****, a DreamWorks' **_**How to Train Your Dragon**_** fanfic series by Raberba girl**

**List of themes by AngieChild****, Variation 1 for the 100ThemesChallenge group on DeviantArt**

A/N: I think Hiccup is four in this one.

o.o.o

"Swim and sail," Hiccup requested as his mother tucked a blanket around him.

"Ask like a human, sweetheart."

"[You _know_ what I want!] Swim and sail! Sing!"

"Ask like a human, Hiccup."

He sighed and grumbled to Toothless, who croaked back in a teasing sort of way. "...Mama, please sing-" He had to think a moment. "Please sing...'For Dancing'...'For THE Dancing...and...THE Dreaming'...song. Please sing this song that I like, Mama."

She leaned to kiss his forehead, then softly started his favorite song, the one that he liked better than any of the proper lullabies she sometimes used. He sang along with her - or, more accurately, hummed and warbled, only very occasionally breaking out into a word or two before reverting.

When she had finished, there was silence for a while. She lay stretched out beside her son, caressing him absently, watching him watch the ceiling as the already-asleep Toothless ruffled his hair with each breath. "...Do you remember what that song is, Hiccup?" she finally asked.

"Mate song for you and _him_."

"Who is 'he,' Hiccup?"

"...Papa," Hiccup finally grumbled.

"Don't be angry at him for not being here, Hiccup...we took you away from him, he couldn't come with us here..."

"Papa help Mama take care of hatchling." Hiccup paused. "Not hatchling. [Cub.] Human word?"

"Human word for what, Hiccup?"

"Baby that drinks milk, no egg."

"Er...isn't it just 'baby'?"

"Baby is _all_! I am baby, [Half Of Me] is baby. But _He_ is 'hatchling,' I'm not. What am I?"

"You're a little boy, Hiccup."

Hiccup thought about this. "Baby bear is 'little boy'?" he then asked. "Baby wolf is 'little boy'?"

"What? No. A baby bear, or a baby wolf, they're cubs, not boys. Only humans are boys."

"_Cubs_," Hiccup repeated, testing the word. "I am 'cubs'?"

"Remember singular and plural. 'Cub' if it's just one, 'cub_s_' if there are more than one."

"_Cub_. I am _a_ _cub_. [Half Of Me] is _a_ hatchling, came out of egg. _An_ egg."

"When you use human words, Hiccup, please use his human name."

"*siiiiiiigh* _Toothless_. Toothless is a hatchling. He is Half Of Me, my 'Toothless' that I love."

"I'm glad that you're friends. I don't know what I-"

"Two halves," Hiccup insisted. "More love than friends."

"Two...two halves." She hesitated, wondering how to clarify the human approach to relationships, or if she even should, considering that she still wasn't sure of the extent to which it differed from dragon relationships. "...You know, Hiccup, it's a little different for humans."

"[Duh!] Different, different, different, humans always different! Annoying!"

"Hiccup...you know that your father and I are two halves, right?"

He stared at her. "Mama and _Cloudjumper_ two halves."

"Y...Yes." She couldn't deny that after more than three years together, she felt like her dragon was an essential companion, like she knew him and he knew her almost as well as she knew herself. "But Hiccup, listen to me. I know it's hard for you to understand, because it's different for dragons, but I am two halves with Cloudjumper _and_ with your father."

Hiccup growled and hid his face under the blanket.

Valka leaned over and tugged it slightly, so she could murmur into his ear, "I love your father very much. That's why _you_ exist. Your father and I love each other so much that we made _you_."

Hiccup peered out at her with a dubious look.

"That's why that song is special to us. It's not really a mating song, it's a _love_ song. Even if we never 'mated' again, we still love each other so much that we would follow each other to the ends of the earth, we would overcome any obstacle to be together-"

"[Your mate NOT follow] NOT together, far away, [human] not-true, [I hate human things; dragons dragons] dragons dragons [I love very so much dragons; human things are too _difficult_!]" He flopped over, yanked the blanket back over his head, and practically rammed himself into Toothless. The dragon started awake, gave Valka a confused look, then licked Hiccup and rumbled soothingly.

Valka sighed and gave up for the moment and wondered what she kept doing wrong.

o.o.o

Author's Notes: I have no idea if Norse does singular and plural the same way English does...

Lol, Hiccup kept going off on rabbit trails. XD Every time I'd try to bring the conversation back on track, he'd plunge away and get distracted again like he was doing it on purpose. I didn't even get to the main point of why I tried to write this ficlet before it decided it was over, so I had to save it for the next ficlet. Which I've already written, btw. I'm surprised that my muse's attention span for this series has lasted this long.

Ftr, I usually try to avoid English slang for dragon language, but I do use "Duh!" because my dragon language _does_ have a word that means, "Why are you telling me that when it's so stupidly obvious?!" I use "duh" because it conveys the meaning and informal connotation of the dragon word most accurately and succinctly. (Lol, just looked it up and found a great dictionary definition: "Used to express disdain for something deemed stupid or obvious, especially a self-evident remark.")

Complete: 3/100


	4. Break Away (theme 6)

_**Hybrid: Break Away**_** (theme ****6****) [rough draft]****, a DreamWorks' **_**How to Train Your Dragon**_** fanfic series by Raberba girl**

**List of themes by AngieChild****, Variation 1 for the 100ThemesChallenge group on DeviantArt**

A/N: Again, I think Hiccup is four.

o.o.o

Hiccup soothed and caressed and comforted the injured dragon until it had calmed down enough to let Valka tend to it. Hiccup, in between crooning and petting, would steal horrified glances at the torn hide and bloodied flesh, the work of a metal trap.

When the dragon had fallen into an exhausted doze, Hiccup crept into his mother's lap, and Toothless pressed heavily against them both. "Mama, why?" Hiccup whispered.

"Remember what I told you?" she murmured back, rocking him a little to soothe him. "Outside this nest, humans and dragons don't like each other...they're angry and frightened, and they hurt each other."

Hiccup's fingers clenched around her sleeve. "Humans hurt him."

"Hiccup, you know that some dragons are kind and good, but other dragons are violent and selfish. Humans are the same way. Humans can be both good and bad, just like dragons. Sometimes a human or a dragon gets hurt, and then wants to hurt other humans and dragons."

"Hurt him..."

"That's why I want you to grow up here, Hiccup. Our village, our real home- Our...our old home...do you remember what it's called?"

"..."

"Berk, Hiccup. Our human home is called Berk. Your father is still there."

"Papa, Father, come here to take care of me and love you. Not _there_ far away."

"Hiccup, he is fighting. The whole village has been fighting and fighting for a very long time. Dragons come and take their food away, so they get hungry and angry and scared, that's why there's so much fighting. Here, you have me and Icefisher and all these other dragons to take care of you, so Papa can focus on taking care of the village. He's the chief, Hiccup."

He looked at her uncomprehendingly.

"You are the son of a chief, Hiccup."

"Dragon word?"

"Er...I'm not sure... A chief, he is the leader."

Hiccup frowned in confusion. "Alpha?"

"No, that would be, let's see...a king. A king is the leader of many peoples. Many...flocks, many human flocks. Like how our alpha has power over all dragons. Stoick, your father, he is the chief of one tribe, one flock. He's the leader."

"Leader? Partner?"

"Well...I suppose I was his partner when I still lived there..."

Hiccup straightened up and stared at her, surprised and aghast to learn of her neglect. "Mama is _queen_?!"

"Oh, Hiccup! Nothing like that, I- Well, I'm a chieftain's wife, that's not really-"

"Mama is queen! Go back to our scared human flock take care of them, left consort all alone!"

"What?" Finally she realized what he had misunderstood. "Oh-! Not a dragon queen, Hiccup! Oh, how do I explain this... _Stoick_ is the, the queen, I suppose. Stoick is the first leader of his flock. When I was there with him, I was his wife, his consort."

Hiccup thought about this some more. _"Papa is the queen, but he's male? Mama is the consort? But she left him... It's good that she left? She ran away and took me away, why? Fighting and hungry? Humans hate dragons? Keep her cub safe from danger and hunger, but her flock is still fighting and scared, why, confused, two flocks, I don't understand I don't understand!"_

"Tell me what's wrong, Hiccup."

But Toothless was asking for an explanation as well, and Hiccup answered him first. _"I don't know if Mama did a bad thing or a good thing, she is keeping her cub safe but her flock is sad and alone and scared and fighting, she is consort but she left. For me? For me?! Alone flock, my fault?!"_

_"Safe Half Of Me, safe _here_,"_ Toothless said. _"She can go back and take care of her flock, Half Of Me stay here safe."_

Hiccup crooned back in approval of this plan, knowing that with the loss of both of his parents, Ice Hunt would adopt him.

"Hiccup, what are you telling him?"

"Mama, go away," Hiccup said, slinging an arm around Toothless.

"What?!"

"Mama consort go to human flock, help queen take care of them. Hiccup cub stay here, nightwings Alpha's flock take care of me."

"Hiccup, no, I wouldn't leave you like that!"

"_Flock_! Left your flock, Mama!" Hiccup cried, angry.

"We will go back someday, Hiccup! When you're old enough. You're too young now, but we'll go back when you're older, when you can teach the villagers and the dragons how to be at peace with one another."

Hiccup hunched down under Toothless's wing in disapproval. _"My fault...sad flock, my fault, I don't want it to be my fault, Mama is making it my fault, I have to get bigger older more mature. [Peace?!] How do I make angry scared dragons and humans stop fighting?!"_

_"She made You upset, I will take You away from her."_

_"Yes. We will go chase fish, maybe catch one."_ Hiccup slid up onto his dragon's back. Toothless wasn't strong enough to fly with him yet, but he could carry him on foot when they needed to get somewhere fast.

"Hiccup! Toothless, bring him _back_ here!"

"Go fishing, Mama!" Hiccup called back by way of explanation, and then they were gone.

o.o.o

Author's Notes: This conversation about Stoick was what I was trying to get at in _Annoyance_.

Human Hiccup is usually pretty easygoing for me, but hybrid Hiccup is really being a brat. X'D All this brainstorming where he was acting like he could care less about Berk, then suddenly here in the middle of drafting, he's going altruistic on me in this smug way. *sweatdrop*

Most of the time, I receive normal messages from people (thank you, btw! :D). A few times, I receive odd messages. And every so often, like the two I got recently from (I assume) completely different people, I receive such bizarre, nonsensical, totally out of left field messages that I can only conclude the senders are trolls, mentally ill, or spambots or something. o.O (As always, it's FanfictionDotNet; haven't had a problem on the other sites I post on.)

Argh, okay - for my own personal terminology, I use "one-shot" for single installments that are several thousand words long, but I have another type of short story, the equivalent of a "doodle" for artists, where I aim for just a few hundred words (though it usually ends up being longer) or just want to throw down a quick scene or idea. These are usually about 600-1,200 words, and I _was_ calling them "drabbles" for a long time, but decided to change my terminology when I learned that, technically, a "drabble" is supposed to be a short work that's exactly 100 words. So I recently changed the term to "ficlet" instead, but I looked it up the other day and it seems like "vignette" means the same thing but is less cutesy? So I'll probably start saying "vignette" instead of "ficlet" or "drabble."

I'm gonna see if I can progress on something that's not _Hybrid_ this weekend, preferably one of the stories that I promised to people (way too long ago!). Next _Hybrid_ vignette is drafted, btw, and I've been trying to get the one after that done. It's the first one that brings in another character, and has been causing me problems.

Complete: 4/100


	5. Innocence (theme 8)

_**Hybrid: Innocence**_** (theme ****8****) [rough draft]****, a DreamWorks' **_**How to Train Your Dragon**_** fanfic series by Raberba girl**

**List of themes by AngieChild****, Variation 1 for the 100ThemesChallenge group on DeviantArt**

A/N: **This is the first vignette so far that I'm posting out of chronological order.** It takes place soon after Valka and Hiccup meet Toothless and his family, however long it would have taken until Ice Hunt had to repel a threat during one of his shifts as a flock guardian.

Aaaarrrgghhh, too many Fan Character names to come up with... *deletes all the stuff I typed about Ice Hunt* **And "Prickle" ("person who doesn't trust easily and puts up a prickly hedge of self-protection") is what Hiccup calls Tooth's mother in dragon language (unless I can think of something better); I don't know her most common name yet.** Gosh, I really don't like having to create FCs... *frustrated*

o.o.o

The first time Valka awakened in the dark to the horrifying sound of a Night Fury's whistling shriek, she panicked. Especially when she started up and instinctively reached out for her child and found him _gone_.

"HICCUP!" she screamed, floundering out of the cave. "HICCUP! HICC-!" She stopped short, almost unable to make sense of the sight of three black hatchlings and one human child all lined up in a row, watching the nightmare dragon's fire exploding across the night sky as if nothing alarming was happening. Then the way they all looked over their shoulders at her in confusion, as if they had no idea why she was making such a fuss...

"Hiccup, come _here_!" she cried, snatching him up and rushing back into the cave. She was vaguely aware of flapping wings and confused chirps and barks, as Cloudjumper and the other nearby dragons were roused by the noise she was making. "Get inside, get inside, get inside-!"

"MAMA!" Hiccup yelled, not for the first time, thoroughly annoyed. "No danger! Protect, safe, _sleep_!"

"Hiccup, ssshh, stay inside, it's a _Night Fury_, darling, there's a Night Fury out there, they're very dangerous, we must hide until it's safe-!"

"[Ice Hunt] tell [foreign hostile] dragons stay away. Safe."

"Sssshhhh!"

Toothless was sniffing at her, trying to figure out why she was upset. One of his brothers knocked over the broom, startling all four children. Hiccup and Toothless turned away in disinterest a moment later; Reckless and Stubborn dashed into hiding. After a pause, the two bigger hatchlings cautiously crept back out, stalked the broom, investigated it until they decided it wasn't a threat, then happily started trying to pull it apart.

There was a thump from outside. Valka stiffened in alarm, then relaxed a little when she recognized the annoyed, commanding bark of Toothless's mother. Reckless and Stubborn immediately rushed back outside. Toothless started after them, then paused and looked back, making a questioning little croak as if he didn't understand why Hiccup wasn't coming with him.

Hiccup squirmed. "Mama, put me down! [Prickle] feed us."

"_Hiccup_, don't tell me you've been eating raw fish?! _Regurgitated_ raw fish?!"

"Feed us food fish want _hungry_!"

"Hiccup! And of course you can't go outside anyway, there's a Night Fury-!"

There was another thump, from Ice Hunt coming to a landing. He poked his head into the cave and barked. Toothless immediately ran to him, purring and pressing up against his forelegs like a cat; Ice Hunt nuzzled him back.

"Mama let go let go let gooooo!"

"Hiccup, what has gotten _into_ you?!"

Ice Hunt, after cocking his head in confusion, finally went to greet the human boy when he saw that Hiccup wasn't being allowed to come to him.

Hiccup purred and nuzzled back. "Good [Ice Hunt, protect us keep us safe], chase away bad dragons." Then, to Valka's shock, he made a near-perfect imitation of the Night Fury's whistling warning.

Realization sapped the strength from Valka's legs, and she had to sit down rather quickly, keeping a tight hold on her child. _'D...Did Icefisher drive off the Fury, or...?! I don't hear it anymore...it was _him_?! This whole time, they've been...?!'_

The dragon, the _Night Fury_, her fellow parent whom she had come to befriend and trust, licked Hiccup affectionately and crooned his love for the two children and his pride in keeping them and the flock safe. He looked at Valka again with those familiar big beautiful eyes, so friendly and full of innocence.

Valka finally set Hiccup down behind her and, trembling a little, took Ice Hunt's face in her hands. He licked her cheek and crooned at her, slightly concerned. "The unholy offspring of lightning and death itself," she whispered. "I suppose, with everything else they misunderstood, I shouldn't be surprised that they got this wrong, too..." The dragon briefly pressed his face to her heart, which was still beating too quickly, and made a questioning chirring sound. "I'm all right...I'll be all right... Ohhhh, this will take some getting used to..."

o.o.o

Author's Notes: One of the things I enjoyed reading in _Nightfall_ was Valka not realizing that Toothless is a Night Fury until after she'd come to love him as a son. XD I wanted to play with that idea a bit, especially in a less urgent situation where she doesn't have more important things to worry about.

I know I said that the next vignette will have a new character, but then I figured I might squeeze in an extra one where Valka's adjusting to the idea that their new best friends have turned out to be a family of Night Furies. XD

Also, someone has said that they'd like to see stuff from different perspectives other than Valka's, such as Tooth's. I'm sure I'll eventually get around to doing some alternate perspectives, but right now I'm more focused on trying to hammer out the main plot. I'm just letting the vignettes choose their own perspectives in the meantime, and so far it's usually been Valka, but I'm sure _eventually_ Hiccup and the dragons will get turns.

**Again, guys, don't expect me to continue being this good about updating for very long, okay?** I'm shocked that my muse is still as interested in this story as it is; I anticipate that any day now, I'm going to lose interest again and jump to a different project. I always finish what I promised, but sometimes it takes me a REALLY LONG TIME. I've got stories I started posting seven years ago that I still haven't properly finished. *sweatdrop*

Complete: 5/100


	6. Expectations (theme 33)

_**Hybrid: Expectations**_** (theme ****33****) [rough draft]****, a DreamWorks' **_**How to Train Your Dragon**_** fanfic series by Raberba girl**

**List of themes by AngieChild****, Variation 1 for the 100ThemesChallenge group on DeviantArt**

A/N: Takes place right after _Innocence_.

o.o.o

Valka couldn't sleep for a while after that. She kept her back pressed against Cloudjumper and her arms wrapped around her complaining son as she watched the _Night Furies_. Ice Hunt soon left and took to the air again, but Valka stared at little Toothless, cuddling up to his friend like a puppy. As if he _didn't_ have a reputation for being one of the deadliest and most feared dragons on the face of the earth.

"Did you know that I used to have nightmares about you?" she murmured as she stroked the hatchling's head. Toothless purred and pressed into her touch. "It was a Night Fury who killed my father...struck and left him dead so quickly that no one saw anything except a black blur..." The boys were half-asleep now, Toothless exhaling a mildly fishy smell with each breath, Hiccup drooling a bit on the dragon's black scales.

Cloudjumper made a quiet croak and started to preen his partner's hair, which felt soothing. Valka let herself be comforted as she looked at the little black dragon's jaws resting next to her baby's face, paws curled right up against Hiccup with only a layer of clothing between claws and soft flesh...

_'Stop it, Valka,'_ she scolded herself. _'There's a full-grown dragon repeatedly putting his fangs right next to your head, and you're not in the least worried about _that_, are you?'_ She sighed and forced herself to kiss Toothless on the forehead. He opened his eyes for a moment and regarded her, then closed them again and buried his snout in Hiccup's hair. "I love you, you sweet, dangerous little thing," she murmured. "Oooh, nothing so deadly has any right to look so endearing..."

In the end, she was only able to get to sleep after it occurred to her that if one of the most dangerous dragons in the world adored her son and would do anything to protect him, then Hiccup was probably safer at this Night Fury's side than he would be anywhere else.

When Valka awakened in the early morning light, Toothless was still asleep and Hiccup was drawing pictures of him. Ice Hunt lay in one of the entryways, resting his head on his paws. He fixed his eyes on Valka as soon as she sat up. After they shared a long look, she got to her feet, and he immediately rose and trotted over to her, nosing at her in mild concern.

"I'm all right, Fisher," she said softly, stroking him in a deliberate sort of way. "I wouldn't have expected Night Furies to be so beautiful, but you are. And kind, and diligent, and protective...I _know_ I can trust you, love. It will just take my instincts some time to agree."

Hiccup came over and made a cheeping sound, reaching up to poke at Ice Hunt's mouth. The dragon obligingly started gagging.

"_No_, Hiccup, oh my goodness-! And now that I'm not distracted by a blind panic, _no_ you are not allowed to eat the fish they cough up!"

"Hungry, Mama!"

"Then wait for ME to feed you!" She made a frustrated sound. "I'm teaching you how to cook today, we obviously can't wait until you're older!"

"Cook? [Fish?]"

It took a day for Valka to stop flinching and cringing and anxiously focusing on the Night Furies whenever they got too close to her child. It took a few more days for her feelings to ease even after she'd gotten her physical reactions under control.

Eventually, the term "Night Fury" lost its jolt, and Valka was able to recognize emotionally rather than just intellectually that nothing had changed: friends were still friends, no matter what their breed. The deadliest dragons on earth were just as capable of being as sweet, bratty, curious, or annoyed as any other breed, or any human.

The next time Hiccup trilled "I love you" to his Night Fury companion in both Dragonese and Norse, Valka found herself scratching Toothless under the chin and echoing the sentiment without a second thought.

o.o.o

Author's Notes: I don't...really like the name "Icefisher"...and I think it's difficult to say...I like "Ice Hunt," but I don't know if two-year-old Hiccup would be able to translate it for Valka before she comes up with her own name for Tooth's dad... *thinks some more*

I had every intention of working on a prize/kiriban/etc. fic yesterday. Ended up writing and posting a completely random one-shot about Hiccup adopting an albino Night Fury hatchling instead. *facepalm*

Next vignette (which I still haven't finished...) should finally move into the next stage of the Hybridverse! I'm temporarily tired of all these Valka/Hiccup/Furies vignettes.

I fell behind on replying to reviews again; sorry! Thank you so much if you did review! :D I'll answer more of them later today!

Complete: 6/100


	7. Dying (theme 43)

_**Hybrid: Dying**_** (theme ****43****) [rough draft]****, a DreamWorks' **_**How to Train Your Dragon**_** fanfic series by Raberba girl**

**List of themes by AngieChild****, Variation 1 for the 100ThemesChallenge group on DeviantArt**

When Hiccup was three years old, Valka made his first fur cloak for the coming winter. She took pains to teach him that it was called a 'cloak' and was meant to be used for warmth, not flying, but he still insisted on referring to the garment as his wings.

"They are NOT WINGS, Hiccup. You _cannot_ fly with them, they _will not_ carry you. If you try to use this cloak to fly, you will DIE."

Two days later, he didn't die, but only because a dragon caught him before he could break to pieces on the ground below.

Valka panicked and raged and took the cloak away and burned it.

The dragons who saw it reacted with great shock and confusion, and Hiccup threw a tantrum.

At least, she thought it was a tantrum. But when he didn't stop, and didn't stop, and eventually made himself ill, then she started to panic again and paid more attention...

They were all grieving: Hiccup, who lay glassy-eyed and unmoving as if dead; Toothless, huddled at his side, endlessly crying and shivering; Ice Hunt, frantically pacing and licking the two children and rushing away to swoop unsteadily around the nest and then returning to start all over again; Cloudjumper, keening softly but constantly, staring at Valka with such a desperate expression...

She realized that she hadn't burned a piece of clothing. She had burned Hiccup's _wings_. "Oh, Hiccup, Hiccup, they're not wings, they're not part of _you_, it's just a piece of fur!" She held him and spoke urgently to him, trying to make him understand, but he was beyond reaching now.

She took him to the king. On her knees with her possibly-dying child in her arms, she tried to explain, spoken words supplementing and intermingling with the thoughts and images and emotions she pushed at the great alpha. _"He thinks it's his wings, wrong wrong wrong bad, NOT wings, warm safe fur help, WARM for winter! Not wings! Not wings not wings [Hiccup's tiny body splattered across the ground in a great pool of blood] horror horrified terror my dead precious child, no no no no not wings, 'CLOAK' fur warm, not flying!"_ she begged him.

Wise aquamarine eyes turned to the boy. Hiccup sat up, so suddenly that it frightened Valka. She watched intently as Hiccup and the king spoke together. She couldn't understand most of it, though Hiccup's grief and rage and desperation was clear in his posture and tone.

The king rumbled, and eventually Hiccup drooped, slowly lowering into a despondent sprawl.

The alpha looked at Valka again. _"Give his wings back to him."_

_"Flying, die?"_ she asked anxiously.

_"No,"_ he assured her. If Hiccup's look of despair was anything to go by, the boy didn't see the return of his 'wings' as a victory, which could be a good thing.

Valka made Hiccup another cloak. He wrapped it tightly around himself and then hid with Toothless in a rock burrow for more than nine hours straight. Ice Hunt patiently stood guard the entire time, not allowing even Valka to disturb them.

When Hiccup finally emerged, he spent two whole days ignoring his mother and staying out of her reach and eating the same raw food his companion did and refusing to walk upright or speak a word of Norse.

Just when Valka began to be truly afraid that her son would never be human again, she woke up to find him snuggled close to her. She wrapped her arms around him and squeezed him tightly, afraid to ever let go of him again.

"...Hurt me, Mama," he whispered.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she choked out. "You hurt me, too, Hiccup."

He burst into tears, and she could no longer hold hers back.

They comforted each other for a long time, then when they finally got up, he was docile and obedient and ate what she cooked for him and spoke almost entirely in Norse when he addressed her.

By the next day, he was back to normal, expressing himself as a child of two worlds. He used his makeshift 'wings' to aid in communication, seizing the edges of the cloak whenever he wanted to flare it, but he never tried to fly on his own again.

At least, not until he was old enough to make himself a pair of _real_ wings.

o.o.o

Author's Notes: Every time I try to write the vignette with that new character, it keeps rebelling. *sigh* _Someday_ you're going to see a human in this fic who is not Valka or Hiccup, I promise.

It's been a while since I've written anything. As always, news update on my DevArt journal (I don't feel like retelling it all here). I got one of those DreamWorksTV messages, btw; would be interested to know who else has.

Complete: 7/100


	8. Heaven (theme 7)

_**Hybrid: Heaven**_** (theme ****7****) [rough draft]****, a DreamWorks' **_**How to Train Your Dragon**_** fanfic series by Raberba girl**

**List of themes by AngieChild****, Variation 1 for the 100ThemesChallenge group on DeviantArt**

A/N: I guess that the canon character I keep trying to debut must really not want to get written or something, because he keeps throwing all these other vignette ideas in my way every time I try to introduce him. -.- Maybe he's mad at me for making him look uncool. So instead, have _yet another_ OC. *sigh*

**Told from the perspective of my new princess OC. Warning for NON-sexual nudity, I guess?**

o.o.o

The morning of my Cleansing is a cool one. I know that the river will be freezing, but I am the Third Princess and will perform my duty without flaw.

When we reach the river, the eunuchs take up their posts and turn their eyes away from me. My maidens undress me and unbind my hair. I step into the water, which is every bit as cold as I expected, but I begin my meditation and show no sign of discomfort.

My bathing proceeds in peace for no more than ten minutes before one of the eunuchs lets out a cry. I am the Third Princess, this should not disturb me, but it's so unexpected that I look before I can stop myself.

Then I keep looking, for there are marvelous creatures in the sky. They fly like birds, but they have no feathers, and even the smaller one is larger than a bird. The other is so large and magnificent that I am filled with awe. "It is an omen," I say. "I am blessed to be visited during my Cleansing by these lords from the sky."

I am stunned, _outraged_, when the eunuchs do not give heed to my speech. They are raising their voices in alarm, lifting their weapons toward the sky-

"STOP." They pause and turn to me, their faces ridiculous with shock. I am too angry to berate them, but Iris my Senior Maiden does so for me.

"How dare you raise arms against exalted messengers. Humble yourself," she commands.

The eunuchs lower their weapons and prostrate themselves. I lift my hand toward them to forgive them, but then I turn my face away because I am too disgusted to look upon them further.

The sky-lords have landed. I see now that the larger carries two humans on his back, a woman and a child. I can tell at a glance that the female is a commoner and beneath my interest, so I look at the little boy instead. He has immediately rushed to greet the smaller sky-lord, a beautiful young jet creature who returns the greeting with great affection. Their interaction is so loving and intimate, and the peridot-eyed boy moves and speaks in so much the same way as his jet companion, that I realize he is no base human. They are equals, bonded as brothers.

The two sky-lord children swim right up to me with no reverence, and for the first time in a very long time, I remember what it is like to feel humbled. "I greet you, young lords." I incline my head, and my maidens bow.

The young lords chirr at me in the language of the sky. Jet sniffs at my skin and sneezes at the scent of perfume; Peridot is studying me. From the lack of surprise on his face, I know that he has seen an unclothed woman before; from his curious frown, I know that my body differs from what he is familiar with. I look to the commoner woman who serves the sky-lords, and discern from her face, the similar features and her expression of maternal anxiety, that she is Peridot's mother. Or perhaps that is too high a title to grace her with, but it is her body which bore him. Though she is a servant, she is blessed.

Peridot has turned away from me toward Primrose, who smiles at the honor of his attention. He seems intrigued by her sash, running his palm across the smooth dry silk and poking at the sash's tail which trails gracefully in the water. He exclaims and murmurs in his sky language. Then Jet calls to him and he loses interest once again, abandoning us mortals in order to chase his winged brother through the shallows.

The great sky-lord approaches, and I bow to him. My maidens cannot prostrate themselves in the water, so they cover their faces. The four-winged lord examines me, sneezes just like the younger lord did, and preens a lock of my hair. I tremble, delighted and amazed that he should honor me with such a blessing.

His servant speaks to me in a strange language and strokes her hand over the lord's scales. I am astonished at her audacity, but the sky-lord takes no notice of her touch, shifting instead to examine Iris and then Carnation. Shy Carnation is overcome with the honor of his attention and grows faint; Iris is quick to catch her.

The sky-lord squawks in a worried way, and my heart fills with warmth at the great benevolence of his concern. His servant lays her hand on him again and expresses concern also, seeming anxious for some reason. "You need not worry about my maiden. She will recover." I bow my head to the sky-lord again, and he moves away to recline on the shore.

The human woman accompanies him, and now I see my mistake. Not only does he suffer her touch without censure, but he preens her hair lovingly and is pleased at her intimate proximity as she settles beside him. He loves her, perhaps she is his wife, and the two young sky-lords are their children.

There is now no need for meditation as my maidens resume bathing me, for my Cleansing is already infinitely blessed, my Vision a shared one between myself and my entire retinue. Our eyes are drawn back to the young sky-lords. The boy Peridot catches hold of his brother's tail, or more likely Jet has allowed himself to be caught; the little black sky-lord whirls on his companion and pounces at him, knocking him into the water. Lavender is very young and can't help a giggle as she watches.

The sky-lord children splash about for a minute, then Jet abruptly goes still, his attention caught by something in deeper water. He looks just like my favorite of the hunting cats, so I know he is hunting as well. Peridot knows it also, and sits aside. He builds a palace of rocks until Jet is successful in his hunt and brings a fish to him. Peridot lifts the still-living creature toward his mouth - but we are all startled when a human cry rings out. It is so unexpected that I'm afraid it will shatter the Vision, but it does not.

It is the sky-lord's wife, who rushes to her human son, scolding him as if he was an ordinary child. He protests, and his brother joins him indignantly, but the great sky-lord is calm as he joins his family and breathes out flame. I bow at this expression of his might, and my maidens cover their faces. The sky-bride looks at us for a moment in confusion, as if she does not understand the respect we pay to her husband. He must adore her indeed, to love her so much in her ignorance.

The bride cooks the fish in her husband's fire and gives it to her son. Jet has caught more fish for himself, and the brothers recline together as they eat. The cooked fish and the uncooked fish consumed together are a sign.

"The two worlds have been joined," says Iris. "Blessed is he who has found so much to love in an earthly being; blessed is she who was chosen; blessed are they who play and love and fly together as one, for whom the chasm between worlds is no obstacle."

"Our lady is blessed to witness it," my maidens respond. My title is that of Third Princess, but in my heart I know that I am now Queen, for no other has been blessed with such a momentous Vision.

When my Cleansing is complete, I leave the water and am dressed in my new finery on the shore. The young sky-lords approach curiously. Jet soon loses interest, lying down at his brother's feet, but Peridot watches as I am wrapped in silks and jewels. When my maidens begin to adorn me with flowers, he crawls behind Honeysuckle and takes up the two blossoms she dropped, quickly retreating with them back to his brother. He lays the blooms on Jet's head. The little black sky-lord shakes his head to dislodge them and eats one of the flowers, but then spits it out in disgust. Peridot takes up the other and tucks it into his own hair.

"I wonder," Lavender says longingly, "will they accept such a lowly gift?"

"We will offer, and they will accept or reject as they will." My maidens fill my hands with ropes of flowers, and I approach to offer them to the young sky-lords. Jet opens one eye but otherwise ignores me; Peridot, however, stares as if surprised at the offering - then, to our joy and delight, he takes the flowers from my hands. He lovingly begins to drape them over his brother, who suffers it for a few minutes but then leaps to his feet and shakes them all off. It is a rejection, but a kindly one, for his companion merely giggles and gathers up the blossoms again. He looks very pleased when my maidens weave them into his hair and drape them over his shoulders.

"What does it mean," Lavender asks, "when one sky-lord rejects the offering but the other accepts it?"

"It is not a true rejection." I am watching the young lords, the way they nuzzle and lick each other, and I know that they accept each other so completely that I need only win the favor of one in order for him to accept my reverence on behalf of the other.

Jet is lying on his side now, willingly offering his belly to his brother, who caresses it with great familiarity. Though Peridot's hands work with surety, his eyes are looking at me, as if contemplating my worthiness. Then he moves away, taking up a stick and beginning to run the tip of it through a stretch of dirt.

"Is he..._drawing_?" Lavender asks breathlessly.

To capture images is the right of high-born women and priests. "He is a sky-lord," Primrose says. "He may draw if he chooses; who are we to censure him?"

We watch this further unfolding of the Vision, but even after all that has happened so far, I am still breathless with awe when I realize that he is drawing _me_, recognizable in my finery. When his gift is finished, he looks at me and speaks the language of the sky. I bow deeply to accept his priceless gift, and my maidens prostrate themselves. I don't understand the look of surprise on his face, but I smile anyway when he goes to pat Primrose on the shoulder, and when Jet begins gracefully weaving his way amongst my prostrate maidens, examining them. "You do us great honor," I tell them.

Drawing is his right, for he is a sky-lord, but it is my right also, for I am a princess and now a queen. I bid my maidens to hold my skirt so that I might kneel without spoiling my finery. I have never so humbled myself to any but my lord husband and the Divinity, but I am glad to kneel now, for these sky-lords are very kind and it gives me joy to honor them. Jet and Peridot crouch quite close to me to watch as I draw a gift for them in response.

Jet loses interest before I have finished, and stretches out as if his brother were a pillow to recline on. Peridot continues to watch my work intently, but he frowns as if displeased.

When I finish, the images of the two young sky-lords who have so blessed me and my Cleansing are displayed next to the image of myself. Peridot grumbles in his sky language and reaches out with the stick. I hear one or two of my maidens gasp as he mars the lines I have set, but his domain is higher than mine, it is his right.

It soon becomes apparent what he does. Under his correction, Jet's fierce and awesome lines are softened, until the image of the young winged sky-lord looks endearing and playful rather than severe. "You demean your companion," I muse, trying to puzzle out his meaning. Peridot drops the stick and lays his cheek against Jet's head. The winged sky-lord licks his face. Peridot purrs at him, and they nuzzle each other, then leap to their feet to chase after a squirrel that rushes from one tree to another.

My maidens contemplate the drawings with me, but none of us can fathom the meaning of such deliberate debasement. At last I say, "Has not the sky-lord debased himself for love of his wife? And now the young jet sky-lord is debased for love of his companion. They are lords of the sky, yet they have confined themselves to the earth for so long in order to bless me. They are generous indeed." I lift my hands to the sky in thanks, and my maidens bow.

Peridot runs back to me and shows me a rock he has found of an odd and pleasing color. Jet rubs himself against my legs like a cat, and their affectionate touch is so overwhelming that I am in danger of fainting. I manage to keep my senses, and lower myself to sit on the ground before I lose all the strength in my legs. "Thank you, young lords."

Peridot speaks to me and begins to plait a loose lock of my hair. It is blessed now, along with the other. Those two locks will be dyed when I return home, to retain the blessing.

"For as long as you walk in mortal form, you shall want for nothing," I tell the boy. "Present yourself to any king, show him that you speak to the sky-lords in their own tongue and are loved by them as their equal. You will be given gold and jewels, fine clothing, women and servants and rich food." He cocks his head curiously, as if my speech is no more comprehensible to him than birdsong. "It pales in comparison to the treasures you know in the sky, but it is a token of the esteem in which we hold you."

Peridot steps back and takes hold of the edges of his cloak, spreading the garment wide until I realize that it is not a cloak, it is his wings that he wears. He stands before me with his chin lifted, proud of who he is, a sky-lord who walks in the body of a man. He chirrs at me in kindly dismissal, then turns away to return to his exalted father and mother.

Lavender is very young. As Jet passes by her, she suddenly leaps to throw her arms around him, nuzzling her face against his. We are frozen with shock and horror and outrage; Jet starts away and flares his wings in displeasure, lowering his head with a snarl. Lavender has already prostrated herself again, crying out, "Oh, strike me dead if you must, but I was _compelled_! I could not let him leave without a caress! I shall die for it, yet I am glad of my terrible boldness!"

We wait, breathless, for surely she has condemned herself to death, and even as I stand horrified, how I envy her as well. Yet after a moment, Jet merely furls his wings again and turns his back like an offended cat. It is Peridot who pounces on Lavender, but after he has crouched over her and closed his teeth on the back of her neck, it is only a warning growl he gives before he, too, turns away.

They are merciful lords, who hand down such slight punishment for such a grave offense. Not only does Lavender still live unharmed, but the blessings are also untouched, for Peridot's stone remains in my hand and his plait in my hair and his drawing on the sand next to mine.

I prostrate myself with my maidens until the sky-lords have gone away back to their domain. Then I rise again and dance my thanks to heaven, and we return home. With such a glorious Vision, and my entire retinue to give testament to it, none can dispute that my throne is now that of a Queen.

o.o.o

Author's Notes: I know this one's really weird; sorry. I had absolutely no plans to write it, but it demanded to be written while I was working on a different vignette. (You'll see what I mean if/when I ever manage to _finish_ that stupid vignette.) **"Jet," in this case, means "a deep black;" "awesome," in the older sense, means "awe-inspiring" (I hate how badly the connotations have been corrupted in modern language X'D); a peridot is a green gemstone (it's pronounced "peridoh").**

Personally, I don't actually condone the idea of an adult letting a child see her or him naked (unless it's a parent and her or his child of the same sex), but in this story, I was dealing with _three_ cultures different than my own (pseudo-Norse, dragon, and whatever culture the princess is from), so the characters have varying views on this. X'D

The princess and her servants aren't crazy, btw. They're interpreting the experience through their belief system and worldview.

Complete: 8/100


	9. Foreign (theme 27)

_**Hybrid: Foreign**_** (theme ****27****) [rough draft]****, a DreamWorks' **_**How to Train Your Dragon**_** fanfic series by Raberba girl**

**List of themes by AngieChild****, Variation 1 for the 100ThemesChallenge group on DeviantArt**

A/N: AT LAST STUPID ERET CONSENTS TO MAKE HIS DEBUT.

**So far in this fic, I've been using a system of italics and brackets to indicate which language a character is speaking. Up 'til now, it's only been Norse and dragon language; but unless you guys have a major objection, I'm also going to include English (or whatever Eret's native language is supposed to be).**

Ftr, Eret's been learning Norse because his father had dealings with Norsemen, and/or because Eret Sr. disappeared in Viking lands and Jr. wants to know the language when he's old enough to go searching there.

**Hiccup is six; Eret is eleven (and not completely fluent in Norse yet).**

o.o.o

By the time Hiccup was four years old, his mother could no longer deny that her son was, for all practical purposes, a dragon in human skin who happened to be bilingual (sort of).

He was five by the time she stopped procrastinating on the only thing she could think of to help him. Considering that he and Toothless were now practically joined at the hip, exposure to other humans was risky, but it was either that or watch Hiccup grow up thinking that it was completely normal to walk on all fours, lick people, and expect to be caught every time he jumped off a cliff.

The problem was finding human children whom Hiccup could actually associate with. Vikings were out of the question; even if the young ones _didn't_ run away screaming, their parents would still come swarming in with their torches and pitchforks.

Ice Hunt sometimes tagged along on Valka's mapmaking expeditions, and it was he who started leading Valka to new lands when he realized she was exploring.

"Ice Hunt say, 'What are you looking for?'" Hiccup asked on behalf of his friend.

"He knows I'm looking for something?" Valka wondered. She had lately been trying to practice her Dragonese more, and from what Ice Hunt had said just now, she had picked up the words 'female parent' (after some thorough vocabulary clarifications, Hiccup insisted it was a different word than 'mother'), 'search,' and the question indicator.

"He say - _says_ \- he says you're looking and looking for something, parent-anxious, maybe for me your child that you love, it's very important but it's also not-important; confusing. What are you looking for?"

"I'm looking for human children for you to play with, Hiccup. Children you can play with _safely_, without their parents trying to hurt you for associating with dragons."

He wrinkled his nose in his 'translating' expression. That was yet another reason she needed to find him some human friends soon - it bothered her how much of a struggle it still was for him to understand and express himself in what should have been his native language.

"A-so-sating..."

"A-sso-ci-a-ting."

"A-sso-ci-a-ting. I love dragons, humans don't like it?"

"Yes, and they're very protective of their children, so they will probably be frightened to see Toothless. I don't suppose you'd be willing to leave him behind?"

Hiccup screeched and flared his 'wings.'

"All right, all right! I didn't think you would. Which is why we have to find a place where you can play with human children, and the adults won't be frightened by your Night Fury friend."

_"Looking for new toys for me,"_ Hiccup explained to the two curious Furies. _"Human children to play with; boring."_

Toothless agreed, though Ice Hunt cocked his head and wondered if Valka intended for the human children to be playmates rather than toys.

They eventually did find lands, far enough south or east where dragons had little presence and were thought of as distant monsters rather than direct threats to human livelihood. There was still a lot of running away and screaming, but not always.

One man prostrated himself and worshiped the dragons in a foreign language, responding neither to Valka's attempts to speak to him or Hiccup's curious investigation of his belongings.

Another man, though his companions fled, stayed behind to gush in a foreign language over the dragons in wild excitement. He scribbled notes and drawings at a frantic pace, and peppered Valka with heavily-accented and increasingly invasive questions. She eventually became uncomfortable, not liking how eager he seemed to be to learn the location of the dragons' nest. As soon as Hiccup had finished drawing a picture of Toothless in the man's notebook, Valka called her family back into the safety of the sky.

The first woman who didn't flee had such an air of confidence and entitlement that Valka suspected her to be a princess. They had come across her bathing in a lake, but she expressed her surprise and delight at the exotic visitors without making any attempt to cover herself. She and her bevy of female servants cooed at Hiccup and the dragons in yet another foreign language, adorning them with flowers and looking happy to meet a little boy who could speak to dragons in their own tongue.

Hiccup usually seemed to like the adults, as objects of curiosity if nothing else. It was the children he snarled at and fled from.

Despite Valka's best efforts, there was nothing she could do to shield her child from the unmistakable sneers and mocking. Human children couldn't understand why Hiccup acted like an animal. It didn't matter that their words were spoken in a foreign language; Hiccup could still perceive quite clearly that they looked down on him, that he was incomprehensible to them and that they did not see him as an equal. It didn't help matters that the more upset Hiccup got, the more dragonlike his behavior became.

The third time Valka tried to introduce her son to a new group of children, hoping that this time things would be better, Hiccup and Toothless ran away, and did not return until well after nightfall.

Valka, agonizing over the situation, finally decided that she would nurture Hiccup's relationship with an adult, perhaps the foreign princess and her attendants who seemed to like him and Toothless so much, and then hope that Hiccup could in that way be introduced to more children. _'It will take more time than I expected, but I must do _something_...'_

They were still en route, about three-quarters from their destination, when they came across a scuffle in the woods.

Most of the time, Valka and her family steered clear of human conflict, but occasionally there were situations that demanded their intervention. She was not simply going to stand by and watch three men beating a single boy out in the middle of nowhere.

Ice Hunt's whistling warning was enough. The men shouted in alarm and looked to the sky, then fled away when they saw the fearsome beasts descending.

The boy they had left behind stared up at the dragons in terror. He was about eleven years old, heavyset and finely dressed, though his clothes were torn and rumpled, and there were marks of abuse on his flesh. Cloudjumper immediately marched over to tend to the child's wounds, but the boy tried to flee. Ice Hunt blocked his way, and the boy shied away with a shriek. He stumbled, staring around, realizing that he was surrounded by dragons.

"We won't hurt you," Valka said. "Do you speak Norse?"

_"First kidnappers, and now demons!"_ the boy cried in a foreign language. Then he narrowed his eyes at Valka and spoke in stilted Norse, "You being a witch?"

"No, I'm not."

"I am no money! No money for _them_," he pointed savagely in the direction his assailants had run, "no money for _you_!"

"I'm...afraid I don't understand what you're talking about. What's your name?" Valka tried.

He narrowed his eyes at her.

"Name." She pointed to herself. "My _name_ is _Valka_."

"...Name being Young Lord," the boy snapped.

Valka sighed a little, but if he was going to refuse to tell her his real name, she didn't see any reason to force the issue.

"Toy?" Hiccup wondered, walking right up to the boy.

The young lord yelped again and jerked away from Toothless, who bared his teeth and raised his wings in displeasure at the sudden movement.

_"Half Of Me, please hold him still for me,"_ Hiccup asked. Toothless happily knocked over the older boy and sat on him.

Young Lord protested and struggled and tried to lean out of Hiccup's reach, but he couldn't stop Hiccup from patting his hair and then stroking his cheek. Hiccup's eyes widened. He settled into a more comfortable crouch and began running both palms over Lord's face, crooning in dragon language, _"Sooooo soft, like Mama's."_

_"Get off me!"_ Lord shrieked. _"What are you doing?! Get off me!"_ Then, in Norse, "GO AWAY! I NO LIKING YOU!"

"Good toy, Mama," Hiccup proclaimed. Toothless leaned down to lick the back of Lord's head.

"Hiccup, he's not a toy," Valka said uncomfortably. "You're supposed to play _together_ with him."

Hiccup didn't respond, choosing instead to twist a braid into Lord's hair and then lick it.

_"What's wrong with this freak?! _He crazy in head?" Lord demanded of Valka. "Tell them go away!"

"I won't. You're the first child he's met that he's shown any real interest in."

Lord stared at her, and for the first time, she realized that the fear in his eyes was genuine. There seemed to be something more than just the typical fear of flying fire-breathers. "...You catching me? You hurting me?" The way he asked it made her remember how they had found him.

"Who were those men?" she asked. "The ones beating you earlier?"

Lord scowled. He had stopped struggling by now, seeming resigned. Toothless was reading his scents, and Hiccup, frowning in displeasure, was fiddling with one of the tears in his clothes. "Men catching me, take me away. Ask family for money." He gave Valka a pleading look. "You give me to family, going home, they give to you money."

"We'll take you home," she said quietly, "but we have no need of money."

"Mama," Hiccup said, "sew!" He tugged at the tear. "Sew, sew! Fix!"

"All right, Hiccup. But say it right."

Hiccup sighed loudly.

"You need to ask for something," she prompted.

"Please give me sew things," Hiccup said sloppily. Then, at her look, "Please! Give! Me! Needle! And! Thread! I will _sew this_ broken thing!"

"Thank you for asking, Hiccup. Here." Valka took the sewing kit out of her pocket, threaded the needle, and handed it over.

Lord stared as Hiccup began working the needle through the torn cloth. _"He sews?"_ He eyed Valka. "He being boy, but sew? Is wrong. Girls doing sew."

"Hiccup can sew perfectly well, and there's no shame in it," Valka snapped.

_"Whatever,"_ Lord grumbled. He sighed.

Valka moved a little closer. "Lord, listen to me."

He eyed her resentfully.

"This boy is my son, Hiccup."

"Hiccup?"

"That's his name. His name is Hiccup."

Lord barked a scornful laugh, and Valka had to resist the urge to smack him. "_Listen_," she snapped. "Hiccup is my son. He has lived with dragons for five years, and now I'm worried that he'll never learn how to be human."

_"He's a dragon boy,"_ Lord muttered, watching Hiccup. _"Some kind of freak who thinks he's a dragon. This is insane."_

"Lord, I want to ask for your help."

"ME helping YOU?" Lord said indignantly.

"We saved you from those men."

Lord looked at the ground sullenly.

"Hiccup needs a friend. A human friend, I mean. Lord, may I please bring Hiccup back sometimes to talk to you? I want him to play with humans, I want him to remember that he _is_ human. Please treat him kindly. Please be his friend."

_"Hey you, crazy kid,"_ Lord said to Hiccup, who chittered at him. _"I'm a great lord and you're a crazy dragon boy who _sews_, but she wants us to be friends. She's crazy, too, if she thinks _that'll_ ever happen."_

Hiccup, picking up on Lord's hostility and arrogance, took hold of the older boy's head and shoulder, and closed his teeth on the back of his neck, asserting dominance.

_"What is he doing?! He's biting me! Hey, lady!_ Making him go away, STOP! Help!"

"He can tell when you're insulting him. He's saying to you in dragon language that he will not be belittled, that he will subdue you instead, and you must treat him with respect."

_"You people are _crazy_!"_

As time wore on, the young lord seemed to get tired. He stopped resisting as Hiccup mended his clothes and Toothless tended to his injuries. He watched resentfully as Hiccup cut off and played with the silver buttons from his clothes, but he looked very surprised and a little bewildered when Hiccup eventually placed the buttons back in his hands.

_"Toys belong to Cornered,"_ Hiccup said solemnly in dragon language. _"[Share], this thing I don't like, but toys belong to Cornered, I [borrow] and play with them, and now I give them back."_

The boy gripped the buttons for a minute. Then he said, _"Hey. My name is Eret. ERET."_ He pointed at himself. "Name being Eret."

"Name, Eret," Hiccup echoed. _"Dragon name is Cornered, human name is 'Eret.' [Okay.]"_ He nuzzled Eret's face and then wandered away with Toothless.

Valka smiled as she approached. "Where do you live, Eret?"

_"Oh no...if you find out where I live, you can come back anytime you want and sic your crazy dragon kid on me! But if I don't tell you how to take me home, I'll be stranded out here."_ Eret groaned. "I showing you. I showing you, but you tell big dragon no eating me, no eating me ALLOWED!"

"Yes, dear, of course," Valka chuckled.

o.o.o

Author's Notes: **Please tell me if there was any point where you were confused about which language was being spoken! (Again, Eret's native language is English** [unless/until canon states otherwise]**, but he does speak a bit of Norse. Hiccup, as usual, was speaking a mix of dragon language and Norse.)**

I decided that Val would just start calling Ice Hunt by his common name whenever Hiccup does get old enough to translate. Toothless is different because Hiccup's dragon name for him is not one that anyone else is allowed to use, so Val just sticks with 'Toothless' for him.

FINALLY, Eret let me finish his debut. *sweatdrop* He's going to play a fairly big role in this fic. Someday, though, I wanna go back and do Valka's POV of "Heaven." XD

According to the grammar Web site I looked at (  /usage/procrastinate/ ), it's fine to use the word "procrastinate" transitively, but it feels so weird doing that and is not incorrect to add an unnecessary preposition, so I added one. *sweatdrop*

Complete: 9/100


	10. Puzzle (theme 98)

_**Hybrid: Puzzle**_** (theme ****98****) [rough draft]****, a DreamWorks' **_**How to Train Your Dragon**_** fanfic series by Raberba girl**

**List of themes by AngieChild****, Variation 1 for the 100ThemesChallenge group on DeviantArt**

For a while, all Eret could feel was a turmoil of often-conflicting emotion. It had really sucked getting kidnapped and held for ransom, and then the encounter with freaking _dragons_ had been terrifying, and then that creepy dragon kid had been weird to the point of disturbing. Then, on top of all that, was the annoying fuss that was made over Eret when he returned home, which probably would have been ten times worse if they'd seen him be delivered by dragons.

However...there was also the flying, which was hands-down the most _incredible_ thing he had ever experienced in his life. And there was the fact that he had been in close proximity to _dragons_ for an extended period of time and hadn't gotten eaten, or even hurt at all. And the fact that they had actually rescued him from his kidnappers.

And the stranger had been a Norsewoman, of all things, a native of the very same land Eret was desperate to search when he was old enough. Even with all the craziness, he had remembered to ask her about his father. She didn't recognize the name or know anything, but still, talking to her wasn't entirely useless. Eret found himself paying close attention to the way she spoke, and realized that his fluency in the Norse language was a lot worse than his tutor had been leading him to believe all this time, and that maybe...he might actually have good reason to _want_ to see those crazy northern dragon people again.

But he got home and everything was a mess and then it was all normal again quicker than he would have imagined, until that whole unbelievable day seemed distant, like a dream.

Which was why Eret didn't think of dragons or Norsemen when people started whispering about ghosts haunting the castle.

Hamilton, his father's steward who ran the castle in its true lord's absence, tried to quell the gossip, dismissing it as superstitious nonsense. Yet over time, there were so many sightings of strange shadows passing by the windows or darting through dark corners, and so many incidents of theft (mostly food) and mysteriously ransacked rooms, that there was no longer any doubt. Ghosts or no, _someone_ was disrupting the castle, and so far they'd been able to do it without getting caught.

Eret was getting close to buying into the ghost theory (a trail of muddy footprints had ended at the _edge of a balcony_; a sketch that looked far too much like Eret for comfort had been left scrawled on the kitchen floor _as the scullery maids were asleep in the same room_ all night...) when he was awakened one morning by his personal attendants' excited chatter.

"Frederick, Harold, shut up," Eret moaned, burrowing down farther into the covers.

"We were just about to wake you anyway, young master. Mary was telling us that they've caught the ghost."

Eret sat up. "What?!"

By the time he reached the kitchen, where all the hullabaloo seemed to be centered, he had already begun to subconsciously suspect. When he saw the young boy being held captive by Gervais, as Hamilton thundered and lectured, Eret's eyes widened and his mouth dropped open.

Hiccup looked annoyed, and his gaze was wandering until he caught sight of the young lord. Then his whole face lit up as he proclaimed triumphantly in Norse, _"I FOUND [Cornered] 'Eret'! [I'm glad!] Hello, Eret. I am greeting you, so I make this sound that is _'hello.'_"_

"Hi," Eret mumbled. All eyes turned incredulously to him, and he knew he had some explaining to do.

o.o.o

Author's Notes: The vignette after this was supposed to be Hiccup's POV of the same time period, but it ended up taking place slightly earlier. I will write Hiccup's perspective of the 'ghost' thing at some point.

*deletes message to people who read _Strongest Of Them All_ and thought I was going to give up on _Hybrid_* I'm going to work on _Hybrid_ as long as I have enough time and inspiration to do so. I'm just trying to figure out why this story has had such an unusually large drop in response, both in feedback and stats. I was theorizing that maybe people keep seeing the summary and forming some expectations, then read what the story is actually like and are disappointed. (I've gotten several messages about things people wanted to see in the story that I won't be able to include.)

Complete: 10/100


	11. Lies (theme 58)

_**Hybrid: Lies**_** (theme ****58****) [rough draft]****, a DreamWorks' **_**How to Train Your Dragon**_** fanfic series by Raberba girl**

**List of themes by Xcaii****, Variation ****4**** for the 100ThemesChallenge group on DeviantArt**

A/N: Takes place a little before "Puzzle."

o.o.o

Valka was relieved once the boy Eret had been safely returned to his castle home. She needed some time to recover from the idea of having finally established a connection to the human world for her son. (Or, rather, she started procrastinating now that she had at last made some real progress.)

Hiccup had no such inhibitions. Two days after the incident, as he and Toothless were sprawled together in a pile of boredom, Hiccup suddenly decided that he wanted to play with his newest toy. _"We will go find that Cornered 'Eret' that I like,"_ he told his companion.

_"Scared young human,"_ Toothless remembered.

_"He's better than those OTHER human cubs that I very much don't like!"_

Toothless studied him for a while. _"...Half Of Me, You are missing your human breedmates? You are lonely being in this many-dragons-and-two-humans nest?"_

Hiccup buried his face in his brother's neck. _"I am happy with You here. ...But maybe a little small tiny bit lonely."_

Toothless licked him for a while to comfort him. When Hiccup was soothed, Toothless told him, _"We will go find that Cornered that You like."_

_"Yes,"_ Hiccup said happily, glad to have his other half's support, but he also climbed onto the dragon's back and rubbed the scent of his skin over Toothless's scales and licked the dragon's forehead, asserting claim in order to reassure them both. _"My Half Of Me that I love is MINE first always forever, but this fun Cornered human, I will play with him and then I will feel better. My Half Of Me that is mine."_

_"Mine,"_ Toothless purred, rubbing his cheek against Hiccup's arm.

They waited until Valka went to bed and Ice Hunt took over parenting duties. They waited a little longer. Then Hiccup crawled over to his other half's father and asked to play with his new toy.

Ice Hunt considered the request uneasily. _"Your dam who adores you, she will very much worry if you go so far away without her."_

_"Mama is asleep,"_ Hiccup crooned persuasively. _"Mama can't worry because She's asleep!"_

Something about this didn't seem quite right to Ice Hunt. He _knew_ that his human friend would be extremely unhappy if he took her precious thing so far away from her, but little Dragonheart had a point when he said that she wouldn't even notice the absence if she was asleep. Yet...something was wrong. The little human never smelled or looked like this when he was innocent.

Ice Hunt suddenly knocked Hiccup to the ground and pinned him, growling. _"You are doing this 'deception' that we very much don't like?"_ he guessed.

Hiccup squirmed, his body language and the scent of his guilt acting as an admission. Toothless, feeling just as chastised as his other half, hunched down low and whimpered.

_"Right now you are not Dragonheart, right now you are Liar and are _very much_ human."_

Hiccup burst into tears, cowed and repentant and miserable.

After a moment, Ice Hunt set his paw aside and started licking the boy to comfort him. _"We shouldn't hurt your dam who loves you,"_ he said gently.

Hiccup was curled up in shame. He started to speak but soon gave up, too subdued to even try.

Toothless crept close and crouched over him, hiding him from sight. Speaking on Hiccup's behalf, he said in the dragon equivalent of a whisper, _"Sad, lonely. Want to find human cub Cornered to play with and not be lonely, but Mama will be scared even though there's no danger, Mama will keep us home, _boring_, Mama is so scared and wants me to be scared, too. I'm so unhappy, what do I do, what do I do-?!"_

_"Hush."_ Ice Hunt nudged Toothless aside and licked Hiccup again. _"We will ask Alpha. If Alpha says we may go, we will go. If Alpha says we must stay, we will stay."_

Hiccup stretched out, exposing his vulnerabilities to express his gratitude and humility. Ice Hunt accepted the gesture, then nudged the boy to his feet and carried him to the king.

o.o.o

Author's Notes: Even though what Hiccup said was _technically_ true, he knew that a dragon's default would be to interpret what he said at face value. So it was a lie in spirit, which is what Ice Hunt picked up on. There might be a few occasions where dragons would try to mislead, but overall they are animals and usually have no reason to obscure the truth. Deception is a very human trait, and dragons disapprove of it being used unjustifiably.

Ice Hunt's and Hiccup's relationship is a little complicated... Ice Hunt hasn't quite adopted him, because dragons only 'officially' adopt hatchlings who are orphaned or abandoned, and Hiccup still has his mother to take care of him. But because Hiccup is two halves with Ice Hunt's hatchling, Ice Hunt and Hiccup sort of see each other as 'honorary' parent and child.

I've been replying to reviews slowly but steadily; sorry for the delay! My goal is to get to all of them before too much time has passed. :)

Looks like you guys might have to wait a while for that 'Hiccup freaking out Eret's servants' story - as I was working on the vignette after this one (which is Hiccup's meeting with the king), Valka and the Bewilderbeast suddenly started shoving plunnies at me, so I might be jumping backwards on the timeline to when Hiccup is a baby/toddler again. :/

When I first started posting this fic, I expected (because of past experience, such as _His Soul Reflects My Own_...) that I'd be jumping all over the timeline like crazy. One chapter, Hiccup would be six years old, scampering around with hatchling Toothless in the Sanctuary; next chapter, teenage Hiccup would be getting underfoot in the Hooligan forge.

I didn't anticipate that I actually _would_ be writing the chapters more or less in order, merely making small timeline jumps rather than major ones. I think it's because it's important for me to get Hiccup's character development right, because I'm more prone to make huge mistakes with his development if I jump around too drastically. Anyway, if I continue on like this, it's probably going to be rather a long time before Hiccup gets to Berk. Eret (and sort of Hiccup along with him) goes through an entire plot arc before Hiccup ever sets foot on Berk, and there's a lot of random dragon-focused ideas I still have to write, too. (And now watch me suddenly go and write a bunch of Berk chapters right after I've said this. X'''D)

Ftr, here is where I've been listing the _Hybrid_ vignettes in both chronological order and theme order. As always, FFN will eat the link, but it should work fine on AO3 and DevArt: indexmisc/#hybrid

Complete: 11/100


	12. Tears (theme 26)

_**Hybrid: Tears**_** (theme ****26****) [rough draft]****, a DreamWorks' **_**How to Train Your Dragon**_** fanfic series by Raberba girl**

**List of themes by AngieChild****, Variation 1 for the 100ThemesChallenge group on DeviantArt**

Hiccup, still subdued and ashamed, crawled under Ice Hunt's belly to hide. The dragon considered him for a moment in confusion, but did not move to expose him again.

_"Little one?"_ the king questioned.

_"Dragonheart wants to leave the nest for a while, far away without his dam,"_ Ice Hunt explained.

_"My name is Liar, not Dragonheart,"_ Hiccup insisted. He yelped when Ice Hunt stepped away and nudged him hard in the king's direction.

Toothless hurried to shield him from view instead, but the king, slightly annoyed now, opened his mouth - for him, it was a soft roar, but it was still loud enough to prompt the boys' instant obedience. Toothless rushed back to hide behind his father, and Hiccup stretched out in a submissive pose again.

_"What is your name?"_ the king demanded.

_"...My name is [Hiccup],"_ Hiccup whispered. He was still too upset with himself to reclaim the name 'Dragonheart,' but it was a backwards sort of stubbornness to cling to a shameful name like 'Liar,' and the Bewilderbeast would not permit it.

The king did, however, accept the compromise of his human name. _"What is your desire?"_

The way he asked it demanded a deep response, and Hiccup had to think about it for a long time before he was able to answer. The alpha and Ice Hunt both waited patiently.

_"...I want to find where I belong."_

_"You belong here,"_ the king assured him, with such love that tears began to run down Hiccup's face. _"But you may also belong elsewhere if you wish."_

_"Alpha, am I dragon or human?"_ Hiccup pleaded.

_"You are dragon. You are as human as you want to be."_

_"I am dragon, I am dragon...but maybe, these humans, I am curious."_ Hiccup hung his head.

The king comforted him. _"You may seek it."_

_"But Mama says no! She SAYS yes but then Her HEART says _no_!"_ Hiccup cried, suddenly furious. _"MAMA IS THE LIAR, NOT ME!"_

_"She is frightened and hurting. She hasn't learned yet. She only lies to herself, not to us."_

Hiccup's shoulders sagged.

_"Dragonheart may go find this human cub that he likes? Dragonheart must stay here safe?"_ Ice Hunt asked.

The king considered this. At last he said, _"You may not go unless Ice Hunt protects you on the journey. You may not go unless you cover yourself with your human protection. You may not go unless your other half separates from you for a time."_

Hiccup's confusion about whatever 'human protection' meant was drowned out when he and Toothless both screamed in unison, a cry of outrage and fear.

_"Submit,"_ the king ordered, demanding that they listen. Toothless abruptly fell silent, and Hiccup pressed himself back to the ground. _"Listen, little one. This is very much important. You have protection, camouflage. You _must_ use it when you are with dangerous humans."_

_"What protection?! Human weak no-scales skin is _useless_!"_ Hiccup contemptuously pinched and tugged on a chunk of his own flesh.

The king made a trying-to-be-patient noise. _"Not your skin. Listen, Hiccup."_

Hiccup froze. It felt very strange for a dragon to address him by his human name, even though it was nothing more than a mental echo of sound.

_"You are human,"_ the king said, slowly and deliberately. With his words, Hiccup felt as if everything that made him a dragon was being forced out of him.

His body shook, and he sobbed. Toothless darted to him and cried out, pawing at the ground in distress, too upset to touch him.

_"Peace,"_ the king said. _"You are _always_ two halves. You are two halves if you are dragon-and-dragon, you are two halves if you are dragon-and-human, you are two halves if you are together or apart."_ Toothless lay down with his head in Hiccup's lap; Hiccup sat very still, his eyes distant.

He never remembered feeling like this before. The world felt disorienting, too sharp and too blurry at the same time. His head ached. His spine had straightened, and he found himself _thinking_ in Norse.

Hiccup looked down at himself and thought sadly that he had never seen anything as unpleasant as his own human body. He didn't have a good sense of 'ugliness' or 'dirtiness,' so he held out his arms to the king and proclaimed his body to be horrible and useless.

_"It is your body, so it is not horrible. It only seems cumbersome because you are here in this very much dragon nest. When you go to a human nest, you will see how good your human body is there."_

Hiccup doubtfully looked down at himself again.

_"The humans fear your other half, but not you. They see you as one of their own, but not him. In this very good dragon nest, you may be free and together; but in a human nest, you will be safer without your other half at your side."_ Hiccup's tears continued to fall, and Toothless made a continuous, very soft whine of grief, but they both kept listening. _"You have camouflage, Hiccup."_ There was an impression of intense uniqueness, something very different than what Hiccup thought of as 'camouflage,' but which somehow accomplished the same purpose. _"You must use it, or you will be in danger."_

"I am confused," Hiccup said in Norse, pressing hard with his thoughts so that the king would still understand him. "Please explain this confusing thing to me."

_"Your camouflage is that you are human. You must hide yourself by being human. Do you understand?"_ The way he said it worked together with the unsettling shift in Hiccup's thinking, and suddenly he did understand.

"That is 'pretend'?! That is...that is _lie_?!" He was shocked at being _told_ to lie, especially so soon after he'd been chastised for it.

_"It feels like 'deception,' because your true name is Dragonheart and you are not comfortable in your human flesh. But it is not a lie. You are human. You are dragon, but you are also human. You must be human to protect yourself in that human nest."_

Hiccup was frightened. All desire to see the boy Eret again had fled. He held Toothless tightly and begged, "Please don't make me go away from this good safe home nest, I want to please stay here please, I am dragon, please, very good [Dragonheart] here in this good dragon nest, please don't make me be _Hiccup_, please don't make me be _human_, make me dragon, make me-! [Half Of Me! Make me _you_!]"

Toothless surged up and began to cover him with scent, thickly and thoroughly until Hiccup felt like a dragon again. He curled up with his arms over his head, trembling and strangely exhausted, terrified that the king would send him away.

Yet when the alpha spoke, his words were very gentle. _"Your mother is frightened, Dragonheart, but you are, too."_

Relief at being called by his dragon name again warred with dismay. Hiccup didn't like the thought that he was afraid of humans the way his mother was. He was a dragon, he was stronger than her, he wasn't supposed to be afraid of _anything_.

_"Dragonheart that I love is still just a baby,"_ Ice Hunt crooned, licking him soothingly. _"Someday he will grow up and not be afraid anymore."_

_"Please let me go away and hide,"_ Hiccup begged the king. The Bewilderbeast dismissed him. Hiccup slipped onto Toothless's back, and the pair rushed away.

When Valka awoke hours later, she went over to check on her sleeping sons. Her face wrinkled in disgust when she saw streaks of dirt crusted into the dried saliva all over Hiccup's skin. "What have you been _doing_, Hiccup?" she muttered. She went to make the necessary preparations, then came back and scooped up her son in her arms.

He awoke instantly. "Mama! No!" he screeched, as if automatically realizing her intentions.

"You're sticky and dirty, and you _smell_, Hiccup. I've told you not to let Toothless lick you too much. You need a bath," she said firmly, starting to haul him away.

"Nooooooo...!"

o.o.o

Author's Notes: That...did not end the way I'd planned for it to. o.O It was supposed to be setup for Hiccup returning to Eret's castle, not him freaking out and refusing to be human. This kid is so uncooperative!

Complete: 12/100


	13. I Can't (theme 73)

_**Hybrid: I Can't**_** (theme ****73****) [rough draft]****, a DreamWorks' **_**How to Train Your Dragon**_** fanfic series by Raberba girl**

**List of themes by AngieChild****, Variation 1 for the 100ThemesChallenge group on DeviantArt**

**A/N: Please read my fic **_**Smelly**_** before you read this vignette. (It's in my "Dragon Queen of Berk" series.)**

o.o.o

The first time Valka was able to bathe herself after arriving in the dragon's nest, she could swear that Cloudjumper looked surprised and confused while he watched her. As soon as she got out of the water, he started restlessly sniffing and preening her, and she had to pet him and croon to him a lot before he settled down.

It was worse when she finally got her hands on a cake of soap. When Cloudjumper saw her using it to wash herself, he screeched and darted at her, frightening her more than he ever had since she'd first laid eyes on him.

He didn't hurt her, but he burned the soap into a greasy smear for some unfathomable reason and, again, had to be comforted a lot before he finally calmed down. His strange behavior worried her when it came to Hiccup, so she was relieved when the dragon, though looking confused and displeased, didn't put up too much of a fuss when she bathed her child. Cloudjumper did, however, insist on a strange ritual after every bath, touching his nose to Hiccup in a series of nudges from head to toe, snorting gently when the baby would giggle and flail at him.

The next time Valka was able to procure some soap for herself, she took pains to bathe in private. It took Cloudjumper a long time to find her - and when he did, he threw a tantrum, torched the soap again, then pinned her to the ground and preened her hair for over half an hour. Then he hauled her to the king and made some kind of angry, agitated report, and Valka finally learned why bathing upset her dragon companion so much.

The king communicated to her something like, _"Confusion disappointment annoyance, why do you distress your companion who loves you?"_

_"I don't understand,"_ she responded. _"I try to cleanse myself-"_

He didn't understand what she meant by 'cleanse/wash.' He kept wondering, _"Licking? Maybe swimming?"_ in a confused way, so she could tell he had misunderstood.

_"Clean,"_ she fumbled. She often spoke aloud as she talked to the king. He couldn't understand her spoken words, but they helped to organize and enhance her mental communication. _"Body feels good? Was dirty before, bad, uncomfortable, yucky; but I 'wash' myself and now I am...feel good? Light? Good and comfortable?"_

_"I don't understand... No licking?"_

_"No! Licking is not clean!"_

They shared wordless regret at their failure to explain themselves to each other.

_"No swimming?"_ he tried.

_"No? Maybe. A little bit? Swim in 'hot spring,' not salt water."_

_"Too hot, no salt?! Revulsion; confusion."_

There was a long pause.

_"Why is 'Cloudjumper' / cloud jumper / four-wing-dragon that I love so upset?"_ Valka asked. _"I'm not hurting him; why is he hurt?"_

_"Surprise, confusion. You strip away his love, of course he is hurt."_

_"What?! I don't do that, why does he think I do that?!"_

_"He marks you with his love, puts it on your head-fur- Your 'hair,' and your skin, but then you take that bad thing / bad smell thing and strip all his marks away. Unhappy, confused. Why?"_

"You mean the _soap_?!" Valka exclaimed in astonished realization. In her surprise, she had forgotten to try to convey it mentally. _"'Soap,' this 'clean' thing that makes me feel good. Bad thing?! You say it's bad?"_

There was another pause as they realized how great the disconnect between them was.

It took a very long time, but they eventually managed to explain the gist of their differing perspectives to each other. When Valka was finally dismissed, she ran to her dragon and embraced him and comforted him and promised to use as little soap as she could, if that's what it took to make him feel secure. (And to allow her to at least bathe in mostly-soapless water without making a fuss...)

It seemed that the more time Hiccup spent in the Sanctuary, the more he hated being bathed, but it didn't get too bad until soon after he met Toothless.

That was when every bath became a battle.

Valka never forgot the afternoon, warm by this northern land's standards, when she painstakingly got the water to just the right temperature and had everything ready and assembled - and Hiccup seemed to go berserk when she tried to undress him and get him into the makeshift tub.

It was bad enough trying to wrestle with her screaming, kicking, fighting, squirming, raging, tiny yet _strong_ son. It was downright disconcerting to have what seemed like every dragon in the Sanctuary, _including the king_, gather around to watch with various levels of incredulity, horror, pity, dismay, fear, confusion, and sorrow.

Also, Toothless nearly attacked her.

When he saw the distress of his little friend, the baby dragon screeched and arched his back, wings flaring, pupils contracted, _a whistling warning starting up_-

It was Cloudjumper's fierce snarl which saved Valka. Toothless cut off his shot before firing it, flattening himself to the ground and staring up at the Stormcutter for a minute. Then his eyes narrowed and he slowly began to rise, an almost eldritch yowl rattling in his throat - then Cloudjumper gave a great roar, and the little dragon fled to hide behind his wide-eyed father and hissing mother.

Forbidden from fighting, Toothless cried instead, and the heart-wrenching sounds he made tore away at Valka's resolve like claws. "It's just a _bath_!" she cried, utterly exasperated. "I won't even use soap; Hiccup, hold _still_, just let me make you a _little less filthy_!"

The next time she tried to give Hiccup a bath, he fled with Toothless. When she tried to trick him into it later, he begged and sobbed in such genuine distress that she couldn't bring herself to force it on him.

"Sweetheart," she said. Her arms were locked around him to keep him from escaping, so she kept her voice as gentle as she could. "I'm not trying to hurt you. You won't lose Toothless, I promise. I just want to get you a little cleaner, that's _all_. Look." She scooped up a handful of water and scrubbed at a patch of grime on Hiccup's arm with her palm. "Look, we're just getting rid of the dirt, see? I won't use soap, you'll still smell like yourself, Toothless will still know you."

"Don't," Hiccup begged tearfully, "don't, don't," but eventually got himself to a tolerable level of cleanliness.

He still hated bathing. He would whine and complain every time Valka had to nag him to do it, she had to stop him from trying to _lick_ the dirt away from his skin or letting a dragon lick him 'clean,' he insisted on washing himself rather than let her be as thorough as she would have preferred, and he refused to come anywhere near soap. (Soap was actually the most effective threat she had in order to get him to at least bathe without it.) But he did remove the worst of the grime on a regular basis, and Valka eventually managed to train Toothless to limit his post-bath licking to a few important marks, rather than the frantic slathering he'd kept doing at first.

In addition to Hiccup's virtually non-existent sense of cleanliness, his sense of smell seemed to have been affected by growing up amongst dragons, too. There were no odors he found offensive except for a few that didn't bother an ordinary human, such as the perfume which Valka once salvaged from a shipwreck. Then she'd catch him sniffing curiously at things a normal human would have found repulsive.

"Hiccup NO, stop that!" She yanked him away from the disgusting puddle. "Don't smell that! Or get close to it, or touch it!"

"Bad egg, maybe; _rotten_," Hiccup said. "Bad, sick." Then, to the half-grown dragon who had vomited, _"You threw away bad rotten egg. You feel better now?"_

_"Better,"_ she warbled, looking tired. Hiccup patted her neck and nuzzled her.

Another time, when they were traveling in the woods, Valka turned back to find Hiccup and Toothless examining a pile of dung. Just as she was opening her mouth to order her son away from it, Hiccup jumped up and hurried to her with a worried look, Toothless at his side. "Mama, hurry, [flee] fly away, away away _away_, poison angry sick, he will hurt us if he finds us, _sick_, Mama! Bad sick, dangerous!" The boys had realized the danger from what they had seen and smelled, and were able to give warning in time.

Later, when they were back home, Valka sat huddled in Cloudjumper's wings, sadly watching Hiccup and Toothless play with a few other hatchlings. "My son is a very good dragon," she remarked, her words heavy with worry, "but how can he return to the human world if he's a dragon? How do I get him to be a good human, too...?"

o.o.o

Author's Notes: All the natural freshwater sources available are either too hot or too cold for a child to bathe in, so I figured that Valka would need some kind of tub for Hiccup until he gets old enough to be able to use the hot spring that she herself bathes in.

I've got two more stories that have already been written and one more story that hasn't, and _then_ I think I can try again at the Hiccup's-adventures-in-Eret's-castle story.

Since no one reads my stuff on MediaMiner, I decided to do for _Hybrid_ what I did for _His Soul Reflects My Own_, and try to keep the chapters in order on MMO. (I don't want to fix them on AO3 and FFN until the main storyline is done; it would get too confusing if chapters were constantly jumping around.)

Complete: 13/100


	14. Love (theme 2)

_Hybrid: Love_ (theme 2) [rough draft], a DreamWorks' _How to Train Your Dragon_ fanfic series by Raberba girl

List of themes by AngieChild, Variation 1 for the 100ThemesChallenge group on DeviantArt

A/N: **Because, in this fanfic, I've been using italics to indicate which language is being spoken, I think it's too much to **_**also**_** use italics for emphasis. From now on, I'm going to experiment with using underlining for dialogue emphasis and see if that works better.**

**(Though if you're on FFN, be warned that FFN strips out underlined formatting, so FFN readers aren't going to see any emphasis in the dialogue at all. Please read my fics on AO3 or DevArt instead, guys. Please. FFN **_**sucks**_**.)**

I think the main conversation takes place during a point in time when Valka's still calling Ice Hunt "Icefisher."

o.o.o

The first time Valka met the king, she didn't realize he could communicate with her. Her first few encounters with him only resulted in some mild, dizzy headaches, until she and he both stumbled upon the trick of _connecting_.

She found that if she sort of willed her thoughts at him, using images and concepts and emotions rather than words, he seemed to _understand_ her, more or less. He would respond with a flood of strange...mental...stuff, often containing his own images and concepts and emotions which she could pick out, and that was how they spoke to each other. The more they did it, the better they got at it.

It seemed to work best when Valka curled up on his forehead, her skin touching his hide. She informed him and confided in him, chattered to him and sought comfort from him. She told him about her village, the tiny island home where her people fished and raised livestock and struggled to survive the relentless war.

For a long time, the king didn't believe her about dragons being so unaccountably hostile - he thought she must have misunderstood. When he finally did realize that her memories of dragon cruelty were true, he was upset and deeply confused. He eventually concluded that there must be some poison at work in the dragons of her land, some poison either of mind or of body.

His first instinct was to keep his flock far away and safe. Yet when he watched his little human flockling going forth to rescue dragons from their human hunters, bringing foreigners home to be safe and accepted as new flockmates, he began to reconsider. Perhaps, when the threats closer to their own home abated, they might go investigate the southern dragons and rescue them as well.

This thought was a long time in coming, for Valka did not speak of the war often. She was more interested in telling, and the king was more interested in hearing, of the ways of her people.

_"You still love your dam, even though you are an adult and she is dead?"_

_"Your picture for 'mother' is strange."_

_"So is yours. Loving-and-safe-and-older-than-me-and-takes-care-of-me?"_ the king questioned, trying to understand.

_"Yes. Female-caretaker/guardian-of-young-child?"_

They both considered, sensing that there were differences but unable to figure out what they were.

_"I always love my mother,"_ Valka finally said. _"Always always forever. My 'mother' that I love very much, all humans are like that. Most humans. We love our mothers because they are our mothers; we love our children because s/he is our child."_

_"Ah!"_ He thought she had been talking about herself and her dam, and then humans in general; but as she spoke of a 'child,' thoughts of her own crept in as always, and the king suddenly glimpsed the connection. _"Dragonheart your 'Hiccup,' he is loving and brave and clever and needs you, but that's not __why__ you love him. You love him only only only because he is your child, that is the only reason! You are happy to love him because he is good, but even if he was bad, you would still love him and you would be unhappy to love him, because he is your child. Yes?! Yes, I am right?!"_

_"Yes, you are right,"_ she said distractedly, finally understanding why he had been confused before. _"But I don't understand! All dragons mothers love their children, all dragon mothers care for them and protect them and are affectionate to them?!"_

_"Parent. Parent is very much important thing to be. Take care of and protect and teach offspring, so they will grow up and be good and survive and mate and make more offspring. But 'parent' and 'child' bound together with love? Not important. 'Person' and 'person' bound together with love, very much important."_

She was quiet a while, absorbing what he was saying. "Your bonds of love are entirely unrelated to your bonds of blood," she finally concluded. Then, addressing the king again, _"But 'Ice Fisher' and his mate, they love each other? They are 'husband' and 'wife,' they-"_

_"Stop, too much!"_ The strange words she had just used conjured up a hopelessly confusing tumult of emotion and memory that he wanted to sort through later, but not until the current matter was cleared up. _"I think human mates/two-halves are different? (Your human mate/other-half, I understand now why you cannot give your greatest love to Fourwing who loves you...) Listen. Ice Hunt your friend and Prickle his mate, they are two halves. Very much adore each other always. They are Matched and make babies together; not important for their love. Very much love each other, that is important."_

_"No, wrong; __is__ important! Ice Fisher very much loves 'Toothless' his child/son!"_

The king had to take a moment to translate this for himself. _"Ice Hunt loves this hatchling you call 'Toothless.' Ice Hunt must take care of this hatchling until it's mature; that is important. Ice Hunt and Humanhalf love each other as companions; that is important - DIFFERENT important."_

Now it was Valka's turn to take some extra time to process this. _"...Ice Fisher and Toothless love each other if they are not parent and child? Parent takes care of child even if they do not love each other?"_

_"Yes."_

They rested quietly for a while. Reaching an understanding between them was usually rewarding and exhilarating, but exhausting as well.

When the king had recovered, he decided to ask about her LOVE/PAIN/STOICK/MATE/PACK-LEADER/MISS-HIM-SO-MUCH/ANGER/SAFE/HOLD-ME/PROTECT-ME/WANT-HIM/SEX-ECSTASY/CHILD/HICCUP/PANIC/MISS-HIM explosion she'd hit him with earlier. _"Explain human mates and two-halves to me."_

Valka laughed. _"Very big and difficult thing to explain, I am tired. Later?"_

_"Later,"_ the king agreed.

o.o.o

Author's Notes: _"he is loving and brave and clever and needs you, but that's not __why__ you love him."_ Keep in mind that the king is trying to understand this from a dragon perspective. His basic conclusion is that (in general) humans' love for their children is automatic, permanent, and unrelated to the child's individual qualities and characteristics. The wording might be different than what a human would use, but he basically figured out what he'd been misunderstanding before.

"Greatest love" - just like Hiccup with Toothless and Astrid in my more canon-based stories, Valka's love is too split between Cloudjumper and Stoick (and Hiccup); she can't in good conscience "capitalize Cloud's pronoun" the way two halves are supposed to. The dragons try to be understanding with Val &amp; Hicc because they're humans and form relationships differently, but normal dragon two-halves pairs would unquestionably love each other more than any other creature. (I mean, I would argue that Hiccup &amp; Valka _do_ actually love their dragons more than they love any human, but as long as their beloved spouses and children are around, they can't focus their love as intensely as a dragon would. If one of the dragons had to choose between his other half or anyone else, he would immediately choose his half; but if the humans had to choose between their other half or their spouse/child, their first instinct would be to choose their half, but it would be a heart-shredding choice with too many other factors involved to make the outcome certain.)

"Humanhalf" is Toothless. There's a story I started writing many months ago which uses that name, but I don't think I ever finished and posted it, so I guess the name "Humanhalf" is debuting here in _Hybrid_ instead.

**Hey, so, I'd like some reader opinions on possible, **_**non-romantic**_** HiccStrid in this fic after all.** At first, I thought that if I let Hiccup have a sexual partner, he would mate with Camicazi in a plotline that was both against my religion and too off-track. But it just occurred to me yesterday that if I pair Hiccup with Astrid instead, they can actually do most of the same important stuff, but in a way that _isn't_ against my religion and which _doesn't_ get too off-track. (And which actually solves a Berk logistics problem I'd been pondering.) I'll still want Hiccup to be ace (probably sex-indifferent), because otherwise it might cause unwanted complications in his interactions with other human females, but maybe this way I can actually help out both Astrid and Hiccup. ...I _might_ lose a conversation I'd had planned for Hiccup &amp; Gobber (though it's possible I could still work it in anyway), but I think that would be the only story-related casualty.

**Please keep in mind that even if Hiccup &amp; Astrid do marry in this fic, they **_**won't**_** be lovers (emotionally) - it's solely a marriage of convenience, they'd both be openly using each other for their own ends. That being said, what do you guys think? Hiccup will be ace either way, and HiccStrid will not really have a romantic relationship either way; the main things that would change are Berk politics and whether or not Hiccup ever has offspring to raise.**

Complete: 14/100


	15. Test (theme 77)

_**Hybrid: Test**_** (theme ****77****) [rough draft]****, a DreamWorks' **_**How to Train Your Dragon**_** fanfic series by Raberba girl**

**List of themes by AngieChild****, Variation 1 for the 100ThemesChallenge group on DeviantArt**

A/N: Continuation of "Tears." (Finally.)

Again, even though the chapters are posted non-chronologically, they are listed in the correct order on my Wordpress fanfiction index.

o.o.o

Valka hated making her son bathe, because he always turned it into such an ordeal. Yet she _had_ to, because even though she'd been living out in the wilderness with dragons for years, she still had _some_ standards, and Hiccup's tolerance for being dirty seemed to have no limit.

She had no idea what Hiccup had been doing while she slept, but whatever it was had involved more licking than usual and apparently some rolling around in the dirt. Saliva, mostly likely Toothless's, had dried as a flaky film on Hiccup's skin, after having caught a layer of soil and bits of moss. Hiccup looked like he hadn't bathed in half a year, and smelled very strongly of dragon.

Of course he protested when his mother started dragging him over to the tub, but there was no way she could let him run around like that. "Mama NO!"

"You are filthy, Hiccup, we can't wait for Bath Day."

"No, no, no, no, belong to [Half Of Me], Toothless! I belong to Toothless! I belong to-!"

"Stop it, Hiccup!" They struggled, at an impasse for a moment, then she managed to jerk him a couple more steps. Toothless was crying, held captive by Cloudjumper. "I've told you he can mark you, but this is too much, Hiccup!"

"MINE! I am dragon, dragon dragon NOT HUMAN!"

She stopped, panting a little with exertion, straining to keep hold of Hiccup even though she couldn't move him farther. As always, dragons were gathering around, watching with those unsettling aghast expressions. (The king had once asked her if baths were a peculiar sort of human punishment for their misbehaving offspring.)

It was bad enough whenever she managed to get Hiccup to bathe himself. The few times when she could only get her child clean by force, Hiccup would fight her until they were both exhausted, Toothless would grieve for the entire rest of the day, Ice Hunt would look like his heart was breaking, and the king would look solemn and confused. Cloudjumper would hunch nearby, loyally defending his human but looking miserable and even ashamed in the meantime.

"Hiccup, please...please, I know you feel like you're a dragon, but you-"

"HALF OF ME!" he screamed. "Half of me!"

"WE KNOW!" she shouted back. "Of course we know, how could we mistake it?! I could scrub every last scent from your body, but you would still love each other, I'm NOT trying to hurt you, Hiccup!"

The king gave a commanding roar which Valka didn't understand, so perhaps it wasn't meant for her. Valka was shocked when Hiccup went limp in her arms - though the alpha always watched unhappily, he had never interfered before.

Hiccup cried as if his heart was broken, but for the first time since he had been an infant, he let his mother bathe him without resistance. His beaten despondency was difficult for her to watch. She held up his arm and said softly, hoping to make him understand, "Hiccup, look at this. What do you see?"

He shifted his head and sniffed instead. "[Half Of Me] was close to me, [Half Of Me] loves me, me and [Half Of Me] are together-"

"The dirt, Hiccup. Can you even see it?" she wondered helplessly.

He sniffed again. "Burrow dirt...hiding, scared, sad, very much scared, angry..."

She blinked. Hiccup and Toothless always hid in a certain burrow whenever they were especially upset and needed a good hiding place to recover. "What happened, Hiccup? What made you so upset?"

"Upset, scared... I am dragon?! I am human?! I don't know I don't know I don't know! [Half Of Me] says 'You are my other half I love You,' is okay good comfort peace happy, Mama says 'You are bad scary foreigner, I dominate you I hurt you I make you nothing,' [Alpha] says 'Be human now [so you can be human when]-'"

"What?!" Valka stared at him. She wanted to protest, of course she never meant to accuse or insult or hurt her son - but dragons communicated not just with sound, they also used body language and expression and scent. Perhaps she _had_ been telling him all that without intending to. "Hiccup, you know what's true. I've told you so many times, you don't need a layer of saliva and dirt to prove that you love Toothless. I love you, I would do anything for you, I've never licked you before in your life but you still know that I love you, don't you?!"

"Mama loves me," Hiccup whispered. He shivered. "Mama...loves me..." He flinched. "Mama dragon-say 'I am upset angry scared [frustrated],' Mama human-say 'I love you,' which is true, good?! One is lie?! No, not lie, is true, dragon-say is true and human-say is true, both of them are true, what?! What?! I don't understand, confused, scared!" He looked up at the alpha and cried, _"This human 'camouflage,' I VERY MUCH DON'T LIKE IT!"_

_"Practice,"_ the king ordered.

Hiccup clung to his mother and shivered so much that she wondered if the water was too cold (it wasn't), but he didn't fight her.

He let her run a rag over his skin to scrub away the dirt, talking to himself almost constantly. "Empty scared nothing foreign no, is true, I will say this human true, I am [half of that nightwing I love Dragonheart] Hiccup, I belong to this very good [alpha's] nest, live here home happy good, human mama human papa mate make me human baby is me but I am dragon too, human and dragon too, all very much dragon with [Half Of Me that I love] but human this ['camouflage'] human I go to human nest 'HELLO MY NAME IS HICCUP I AM HUMAN don't hurt me,' find this Eret that I like, [Half Of Me] far away I am SO SAD but hello Eret, hello I am Hiccup human, human you and me together play, go away find my [Half Of Me] that I love Hello [Half Of Me I love You I love You I love You, stay with me sorry stay with me I went away but I come back now hello I love You], all these things empty gone Mama taking them away but STILL HERE, listen to me I SAY IT NOW, I SAY IT so it's TRUE, very good [scared] smells are gone but TRUTH IS STILL HERE, I AM SAYING IT NOW."

As soon as they were released, Hiccup and Toothless ran to each other. Terrified, Toothless started rubbing scent all over his erased other half, unable to stop himself from licking a bit as well, even though he knew how much Valka hated it when he licked her precious thing. Hiccup tried to keep his arms clamped around the dragon's neck, licked him and even bit him a few times, then yelled up at the alpha, _"I PRACTICED!"_

_"Must practice more. Later. Now you can be dragon."_

_"Dragon, I am dragon,"_ Hiccup hissed.

_"Mine?! Half Of Me?!"_ Toothless exclaimed, still desperate for reassurance.

_"YES ALWAYS OF COURSE. [__You__ are Half Of Me, Toothless!] These sounds I make, they __mark__ You, they mark You so HUMANS know You belong to me!"_ Hiccup's eyes lit up as he finally reached the conscious realization. "Smells are for dragons, sounds are for humans! MINE, this Half Of Me dragon that I very much love is MINE!"

Valka was a little afraid to approach him when he was so worked up, especially when she felt guilty for forcing a bath on him. But he didn't run from her or hiss at her - his shoulders hunched warily, but to her surprise, he allowed her to get close and to touch him. "Hiccup," she whispered.

"Mama can't make me nothing," he muttered, his eyes fixed on her and his arms fixed around Toothless's neck. "Smells are gone but sounds are still here. I make these sound-marks, this is ME and this is TOOTHLESS [Half Of Me], mine!"

She put her arms around him, and when he saw that she wasn't pulling him away, he cautiously let go of Toothless so he could hug her back. "Oh, Hiccup..." She burst into tears. She held her son for a long time, and Cloudjumper curled around her as she wept.

After a while, Hiccup squirmed a little, then began to purr and nuzzle her and lick her cheek. "Mama is very sad, Mama is crying, I comfort you Mama, don't be lonely, your other half that you love is here close to you, your precious thing that you love is here close to you, you are safe here in this good nest, it's okay, Mama."

"I know...oh, Hiccup..." She kissed his temple.

"Bath makes Mama sad!" he said indignantly. "Mama I am telling you something, don't make Hiccup do that horrible bath, you won't be sad anymore!"

Valka couldn't help a bark of laughter despite her tears. "It's not...that isn't-" She chuckled a little and tenderly stroked a lock of hair out of his face. "I'm sad because I'm so afraid of losing you, Hiccup. Even when you're right here in my arms, it seems like you're running farther and farther away from me." _'No matter how hard I try to remind you that you are human, it seems like all I ever do is push you into becoming more and more of a dragon.'_ "I don't know if your father would even..." She couldn't finish the thought.

"I find- found, I found a frog. I like it, I want it, holding it this interesting thing that I like, no, it wants to get away from me, no stop that, stay here frog. Frog is scared, frog tries to flee, I will hold this frog and keep it here close to me! Frog is not moving anymore, insides are [slimy] all over my hands, frog is dead. I like this very interesting thing a lot so it's dead now. Bad Hiccup. I must let this frog flee instead; I will play and be happy, frog will flee and be safe. Hiccup is not hurt and frog is not hurt. I wish I let frog flee away and be safe, but I want to play with it and hold this interesting thing, so it's dead now. Boring, not fun anymore not interesting anymore."

Valka felt herself trembling as she listened to her son's story about losing forever a thing he had wanted to keep, losing it by _trying_ to keep it. When Hiccup wandered away with Toothless, she didn't have the strength to call him back. No matter how much she tried to tell herself that Hiccup had misunderstood, or that she had misunderstood whatever he was trying to say, she couldn't make herself believe it.

o.o.o

Author's Notes: This is the chapter that made me decide to use underlining for dialogue emphasis rather than italics. X'D** If you're on AO3 or DevArt, please give me some feedback on this. **(I think it's less confusing than when I was still using italics for emphasis, but I'd like to know if readers agree or not.)

Apparently FFN doesn't strip out _all_ underlined formatting, but it does do it randomly, I'm not sure why. I long ago stopped bothering to fix FFN's stupid mistakes, so if you want to read this fic with proper formatting, please read it on my other sites.

When I was first planning out _Hybrid_, it bothered me how much Valka was struggling as a parent. I'm used to her appearing in other fanfiction (even my own) as cool and impressive, and warm/motherly/affectionate, etc. Eventually, though, I decided that maybe it wasn't a flaw in my portrayal at all, maybe it actually has a kind of symmetry with the canon situation. I like the idea that Valka as the single parent might struggle just as much as Stoick did in canon, that Hiccup really did need both of his parents to balance each other out and raise him ideally. (And that Hiccup is stubborn and resistant to authority no matter which parent is the one raising him. XD)

Valka had a lot of legitimate-sounding reasons for staying away from Berk as long as she could, but I think the real reason she essentially abandoned her family and responsibilities was fear. There were various issues she was afraid of and didn't want to face. Decisions made out of fear are usually regretted, so I guess it's a good thing after all that she's not a perfect mother in this alternate scenario. It probably would have been thematically unsound if she had run away from home and then proved herself right by producing a perfect child able to function easily in both worlds. *sweatdrop*

I've had this vignette written since the last time I updated (18 June 2015), but I totally forgot about it until now, almost five months later. *sweatdrop* I recently also finished another vignette, so I'll update with that sometime soon, but I don't know how things will go after that. My constantly distracted muse is into different stories now, and Hybrid-Hiccup is difficult for me to write! X'D By the time I find enough time to re-read enough of _Hybrid_ to remember how to do his speaking style, I've often run out of time to actually draft anything, and the story flow isn't very good with this fic, anyway.

And this kid _never cooperates_, uuugghhhh. Often, during my general writing process, I will "draft" out scenes in my imagination first, then hopefully find time to write them down before I forget them. USUALLY, the written drafts match pretty closely with the imagined drafts, and any changes are usually refinements. With _Hybrid_, however, Hiccup very often does stuff in the imagination-drafts but then does _completely different stuff_ in the written drafts, so I'm constantly having to alter the story to accommodate him. X''''D It's as if feral-Hiccup, who often changes his mind and enjoys pranking me, is a different character than fully-human-Hiccup, who is a total sweetheart and very cooperative. ^^;;;;

Complete: 15/100


	16. OUTTAKE, DF Test

_Hybrid_ OUTTAKE - "D.F. Test" (rough draft), a DreamWorks' _How to Train Your Dragon_ fanwork by Raberba girl

A/N: **I really need your help; please please please please please read this chapter on Archive of Our Own or DeviantArt instead.  
**

Hiccup's native languages are _Dragonese_ and Norse. Eret's is [English]. Undebuted Character's is {French}. The princess's is _{unknown}_, but different from all those. ^^;

...I don't know if I should add this, but Eret &amp; Undebuted both know each other's languages, though they can understand it better than they can speak it. Eret knows Norse (he's gotten more fluent by now), but Undebuted does not.

Also, Hiccup &amp; Eret have taught each other a bit of Dragonese and English. Hiccup &amp; Undebuted have taught each other a few words of Norse, Dragonese, and French. X'''D

o.o.o

. . .

Eret actually stretched his arms over his head with a groan.

"{You are worn out, my poor dear,}" Undebuted said affectionately, starting to massage his shoulders.

"[Ach- _Ah_, that feels good...]" he sighed.

"Hurt?" Hiccup inquired, confused. "Hurt but is good? Good hurt?"

"I will explain later," Eret murmured, flapping a hand at him dismissively.

Princess, being tended to by her maidens, smiled when Toothless came over to sniff at her. _"{You honor me, Jet.}"_

_"This smell, they are putting tree bark and resin on her body, I don't know why,"_ Toothless wondered, trying to figure out the perfume.

Hiccup came hurtling from the side to crash into Toothless. _"Play with me!"_

As they wrestled, Eret, grinning, dove in among them. "[Yaaaahhhh, humans vs. dragons! Undebuted, be on my team!]"

"{Oh, no!}" she cried, laughing, "{I will not stoop to your level! Besides,}" she added in a mutter, "{I think you boys would slaughter me, playing so rough...}"

The princess craftily bade one of her maidens to bring a bowl of fish, and smiled when Toothless suddenly jerked his head up at the scent. She set the food carefully before her, and sat with perfect posture as the Night Fury bounded over and buried his snout in the bowl.

Hiccup scrambled up and tried to shove the dragon aside for his own share, but yelped when Eret hoisted him up over one shoulder. "Oi, Hicc," Eret lectured, "no raw fish when you are human, you know that."

"Fish!" Hiccup shrieked indignantly, "Fish, fish, fish!" Then, in Dragonese, _"Half Of Me, help me!"_

Toothless ignored him.

"{Hiccup, come here,}" Undebuted crooned, and Eret obligingly dumped the teenager practically into her lap.

"Pet me," Hiccup demanded, even as Undebuted's hands were reaching to caress him. He purred and pressed into her touch. _"I like this caress me {my dear}, _Undebuted_ is nice to me,"_ he remarked in Dragonese, repeating the French endearment he'd often heard Undebuted use.

"[That's not exactly the best way to teach him how to be human, either,]" Eret remarked.

_"{Well,}"_ Princess pouted, _"{if these base mortals are allowed to touch sky-lords without censure, I, as queen, shall claim the right as well.}"_ Toothless had just finished eating and was now licking the last of the fish slime from his lips. Princess held out her hands to him. _"{Jet~}"_ she crooned, _"{Jet, O magnificent one, will you permit me to lay hands on your exalted person?}"_

Toothless, seeing very nice human soft claws poised ready to caress, leaned right into them. Princess made a slightly less-regal-than-usual sound of pleasure as she scratched his sweet spots.

_"{My lady's blessings are through the roof by now,}"_ one of her maidens pouted enviously in a whisper.

"[Okay, this is totally unproductive, time's up,]" Eret announced. He seized Hiccup by the shoulders and hauled him upright. "Hiccup! Human time!"

"Human time, human time, don't like it," Hiccup pouted.

"Ah, ah, ah," Eret scolded, eyebrow and hand raised like an expectant schoolmaster.

Hiccup sighed loudly. "I - DO - NOT - LIKE - BEING - HUMAN," he asserted, obedient in grammar but defiant in tone.

"{What did he say?}" Undebuted asked curiously.

"[Pouting about being human,]" Eret translated. "Hiccup, come on, walk with me, we will practice."

"I DO NOT LIKE PRACTIIIIIICE!"

"If you do good, I will give you [chocolate]."

Hiccup leaped in an explosion of excited energy, prompting Toothless to jump around with him as well. _"_[Chocolate chocolate chocolate]_ I love this sweet good _[chocolate]_ thing!"_

"[Okay,]" Eret laughed, "[great.] Practice first, then chocolate, eh?"

"Mean Eret give chocolate now!" Hiccup shrieked, but then launched upright and sauntered a few steps with his hands in his pockets, imitating the way Eret sometimes walked. "I am human now," he said condescendingly. "My name is 'Hiccup' instead of _Dragonheart_, it's stupid I don't like it but it's true now, blech."

"{Hiccup dear, will you escort me?}" Undebuted said warmly, rising to her feet and linking her arm through Hiccup's.

Hiccup raised his chin haughtily. "Undebuted is a ['fine lady'], I am a ['fine gentleman'], I will **escort** her steal Eret's mate, hahaha, it's funny."

"Not funny," Eret pouted.

"{Don't be jealous, my dear~}" Undebuted chuckled.

"[He knows **exactly** what he's doing, he called you my- Er, my {wife},]" he said, using the French word.

She raised an eyebrow. "{Am I not your wife?}"

"[I mean, he knows you're my woman, that's why he thinks it's funny to 'steal' you from me.]"

"{Alas, I am being carried off by this barbarian ruffian, this [Viking dragon],}" Undebuted said, dramatically lifting a hand to her forehead and leaning back until the confused Hiccup caught her.

"Undebuted is playing?" the dragon-boy wondered. "Undebuted is ['teasing']?"

"She [teases] **me**, Hiccup," Eret pouted. "Do not call her my 'mate,' she is my [**wife**]."

"Undebuted is Eret's _mate that he loves_, [**wife**]," Hiccup said, testing the words to see if they fit. "_Friend, companion_? Loves her. [**Wife**]. Undebuted belongs to Eret is his ['wife'], Eret belongs to Undebuted is her ['wife']?"

"NO!" Eret screeched, causing everyone to stare at him. He blushed a little, then said firmly, "Undebuted is **woman**, so she is **my** [wife]. I am man, so I am Undebuted's [husband]."

"['Husband', wife], too many words!" Hiccup screeched. "Eret and Undebuted love each other and have sex and make babies, _companions/mates_, THAT IS TRUE THING!"

Eret slapped a palm over his face.

"{What is he saying that's got you both so riled up?}" Undebuted wondered in amusement.

"[I will never understand dragons,]" Eret grumbled. "[Trying to sort out spouses and mates and friends and whatever _'Companion'_ means in Dragonese,]" he tried to imitate the chirping purr Hiccup had made, which he knew was a freaking _different word_ than the ten or so other purrs Hiccup used for what Eret thought were basically the same concepts, "[it's a mess.]"

"{You are turning poor Eret's brain to soup again,}" Undebuted cooed at Hiccup, who cooed back, imitating her tone in Dragonese.

Eret shook his head. "[Well, since I've apparently lost the privilege of escorting my own wife...]" He gave a small smile to Princess and held out his arm to her. "[May I escort **you**, then, Your Majesty?]"

_"{You are mocking me,}"_ she said coldly. _"{But you are favored by the sky-lords, so I will deign to let you touch me, __**foreigner**__.}"_ She rose gracefully to her feet and laid her bejeweled arm on Eret's.

The two pairs walked slowly around the garden, Eret and Princess in silence, Hiccup and Undebuted chattering animatedly, Toothless wandering between Hiccup and various things he found interesting.

"{Tell me of your adventures, Hiccup dear,}" Undebuted said encouragingly. Then in English so that he had a better chance of understanding, "[Tell me, you do many wonderful things when I do not see you!]"

"[Adventures]," Eret said helpfully. "Tell her what you do while you are gone from her, Hiccup."

"['Adventure'], this is fun exciting thing me and Toothless do-"

"Hiccup," Eret called.

"TOOTHLESS AND I do together, I will tell Undebuted she will be happy!"

"Do not say what you already will say," Eret corrected again.

"ARGH! Undebuted!" Hiccup said in frustrated distress.

"[Begin the story], {my love,}" she said encouragingly.

"[ONCE UPON A TIME!]" Hiccup glared at Eret, who nodded in approval. "Story start I say [ONCE UPON A TIME] but I cannot say 'I will tell you a story,' Eret says it's wrong!"

"[Once upon a time, a thing does happen,]" Undebuted prompted.

"[Once upon a time] me and Toothless- No, TOOTHLESS AND I, we flying. **We were flying**. We saw wolf pack with dog, **a** wolf pack with **a** dog, I DON'T LIKE IT IT'S TOO HARD NO [CHOCOLATE] NOOOOOOOOO, _HALF OF ME_ LET'S GO PLAY **NO [CHOCOLATE]** I'm upset!" He leaped onto the dragon's back and flew away.

Eret sighed. "[I give up. I don't care if Hiccup's a freaking dragon or a human, anyway; **I** can understand him fine.]"

"{There are things we say without words,}" Undebuted murmured, drawing close to caress his face.

Princess, unable to tolerate the disrespect of being ignored, startled them both by putting her arm possessively around Undebuted. _"{You will tend to me first,}"_ she stated. _"{We will walk together, and only when I am finished with your company will I let you have your man again.}"_

"{I see I have a new escort now!}" Undebuted laughed. She waved back at Eret. "{I will return to you later, my love!}"

Eret rolled his eyes and threw his hands in the air. "[Fine, whatever.]"

o.o.o

Casual author's notes: Lol, I had to look up what "braces" were called. XD (Apparently another name for them is "curly brackets.")

I will update with a (short, but) new chapter of _To Put It In Perspective_ later today! And I will try very hard to catch up on the rest of the messages I didn't get to last night; thank you guys so much! :D


	17. Words (theme 80)

_Hybrid: Words_ (theme 80) [rough draft], a DreamWorks' _How to Train Your Dragon_ fanfic series by Raberba girl

List of themes by AngieChild, Variation 1 for the 100ThemesChallenge group on DeviantArt

**A/N: I got feedback from three people saying that my newest language formatting system for this fic seems to work now, so I will use that formatting from now on. In dialogue, italics indicate Dragonese; boldface indicates emphasis.** I have no idea when I'll have time to go back and fix all the previously posted chapters. DX

o.o.o

Hiccup didn't miss Eret at all for two or three days - he barely even thought of him.

After a while, though, while Toothless would be sleeping and Hiccup would be curled up with him, unable to sleep, he would think of the human world. He thought of all the humans he had met, strange and unfathomable when they weren't being downright scary or ridiculous. He thought of how lost Eret seemed. He also thought of his far away not-home, where there was a papa and a nest and a human flock that apparently belonged to him.

He thought that his real home, even though he loved it, was maybe a little bit...small. He thought that maybe, as long as his other half remained at his side, he would like to go out and look at the world, maybe even find _another home_ out there, and he thought unhappily that in that vast distant world filled with humans who hated dragons, he would not survive unless he became human, too. The king had been right in that. And maybe his mother was right as well, when she said she wanted her son to go back to her old flock someday and keep dragons safe _and_ humans safe.

Hiccup already knew what he had to do, but it took a long time for him to work up enough courage to do it. By the next Bath Day, he finally saw that he had run out of excuses.

Instead of hiding or complaining like usual, this time he crouched and silently watched his mother filling the tub with water. When she had made sure it was the right temperature, she turned away to fetch him, and looked shocked to find him already there. "Er...Hiccup?"

"Make me nothing," Hiccup muttered, feeling Toothless shift uneasily at his side. The dragon could sense that something was wrong. "Time to make me nothing...hurts, have to do it..."

"Come along," Valka said warily, holding out her hand.

He cocked his head. "Soap, Mama." His voice shook.

"Not unless you make a fuss. Come on, get undressed."

He turned to his other half and nuzzled Toothless, who licked him anxiously. _"You are half of me always forever no matter what,"_ Hiccup said. _"You are half of me if we are together or apart."_

_"Don't leave me,"_ Toothless whimpered.

_"I will come back come back __**of course**__."_ Hiccup licked his cheek. _"Mine always forever. I will go away, but I will __**come back**__. Half Of Me."_

_"No no no no!"_

Hiccup's heart was breaking, but he had to do this. With shaking hands, he removed the cloak that he thought of as his wings, and he threw it away.

The dragons who were gathering to watch reacted in shock and dismay. Toothless, feeling like he was being rejected and abandoned, rushed to take refuge with his father, who tried to comfort him.

Hiccup continued to shed the rest of his clothing, which held so many of his scents, until he was naked and shivering with fear, his identity diminished. "Soap, Mama," he managed to say again, seeing that she had made no move to fetch it.

She sounded worried and confused. "It's all right, I won't get it as long as you come here and wash without a fuss. What's wrong, Hiccup? What's happening?"

He had to get it himself. He knew where she kept it, buried at the back of a shelf. When he had retrieved and unwrapped it, the sharp, threatening stench of it overwhelmed him for a moment. It felt like poison in his hands, drier than he expected but leaving a residue on his skin that he was keenly, disgustingly aware of. He brought the horrible thing back to where his mother stood, staring at him as if she had no idea what he was doing.

"You **don't need** the soap right now, Hiccup, just- Here, give it to me-"

"Mine," he snarled at her, so angrily that she backed away.

The horrible stuff was ten times worse when it was wet. The stench increased, it oozed in his hands and crawled to consume him like maggots on a corpse. He sobbed as he forced it all over his body, savagely erasing everything he cared about, scrubbing at his skin and hair until he was no longer himself. Then he couldn't bear it anymore. He wasn't a person, he had no home or flock, no one loved him, he was alone, he was nothing.

He was crying too hard to finish. His mother had to pull him out of the water, it was a long time before he could think of anything but his grief and loneliness.

At last he started to regain some awareness of the world around him. He was wrapped in a blanket, held tightly by his mother she cried softly and rocked him. Dragons surrounded them, sorrowing and keeping vigil; Toothless, inconsolable, grieved at the loss of his other half.

_'But I'm still here,'_ Hiccup thought. He felt like he was dead, but he wasn't. His mother's body was warm, he could hear her heartbeat, the strength of her embrace spoke of her love and concern for him. _'How?'_ He felt like _nothing_, completely empty. His skin felt strange, he could _feel_ how devoid it was of all the marks that defined and claimed him. _'But...I am...still here.'_

He slowly stood up and took one step, than another. Ice Hunt watched him with wide eyes. Hiccup paused at the ledge and stared at the nest that was supposed to be his home. "This...is...my...nest." It _was_ true, wasn't it? It was _still_ true, even though the scents were gone? "The 'king' is...my _alpha_. This nest is **my** nest home _safe_. That dragon there is my _Half Of Me_ Toothless **mine**, that dragon there is _Companion Nightwing Ice Hunt_ **mine**, that human there is _Companion_ Mama my _dam_, my 'mother,' no smells but STILL MINE."

He paused, then his face twisted with dissatisfaction. Human sound-marks were useless. You made them, but in the next instant they were gone again. They were nothing like good dragon scent-marks which lasted for as long as you needed them to (unless an overbearing parent forced you to erase them all).

Yet...there must be more to it. His mother claimed him with bonds as true as scent, yet she almost never actually used scent. He had always taken it for granted, but now he wondered specifically how she did it. She never licked him. She would hug him and caress him sometimes, but he couldn't detect the scents she left behind from that, so he knew that other humans wouldn't be able to, either. How was she able to claim him so strongly as her treasure when she never put scent-marks on him?! How would a human know that he belonged to her unless she kept declaring it in an unceasing repetition of sound?!

He whirled to her. "Mama! Humans know I am your _precious thing_ your important thing your _cub_ child son, **how**?!"

"How? How can they tell you're my son?"

"No licking, Mama! Human marks, say but then go away! HOW?!"

"They- It's- You look like me, Hiccup, and...a woman and a child traveling together...they just **know**."

Hiccup gaped at her. "HOW I TELL HUMANS _HALF OF ME_ TOOTHLESS IS MINE MINE MINE MINE, HOW I TELL THEM WITH NO LICKING?!"

"They know, Hiccup! The way you never separate- You don't **have** to tell them, they just know! They can tell!"

He did not find this to be an adequate explanation. "How, Mama?! Human queen says 'This is my flock my _territory_ stay away' how?! Human says 'this is mine that is mine he is mine she is mine' how?! No licking, how?! They say it?! Sound-marks?!"

"They-" Valka was at a loss. How could explain something so instinctive to a boy who apparently had such a different set of instincts? "I suppose there are...contracts, as well... If a chieftain conquers a new territory and demands tribute, or if a man marries a wife or buys a house or... They can write it, as well."

"**Write**?!" Hiccup shrieked in excitement too intense to be happy, and rushed at Toothless. Ice Hunt, unnerved by the boy's unpredictable behavior, fled a safe distance away; Toothless, dazed with trauma and confusion, didn't move. "Write-marks on my _Half Of Me_!"

_"Half Of Me,"_ Toothless echoed automatically.

Charcoal didn't work well at all on the Night Fury's dark hide. Valka, seeing what Hiccup was trying to do, managed to get a bowl of pale dust to him before the frustration could drive him into a panic. "Here, Hiccup, here, use this. Wet it a little first so it will stick better."

_HICCUP_, Hiccup wrote on Toothless's scales, using his human name because these marks were meant to speak to humans. He stared. A wild smile started to stretch his mouth. Toothless craned his head to lick at the marks, but Hiccup stopped him, demanding submission on this particular matter with uncharacteristic force. _"NO. Making sight-marks on You, scent-marks are forbidden so __**I will make sight-marks instead**__. I claim You claim You claim You!"_

Toothless chirred, confused, but relieved and trusting.

"Mine, Mama! _Half Of Me_ Toothless is MINE! **Look**, I **mark** Him with **human** marks, not good dragon scent-marks. You **see**! Still there!"

"Y...Yes, Hiccup. I see."

For days, Hiccup practiced. He walked upright whenever he was consciously thinking about it, spoke more Norse than usual, unhappily struggled to use proper grammar, and devoured writing lessons that he had previously found tiresome. Valka had a very difficult time trying to convince Hiccup that human writing wasn't really used on living flesh (she was not about to complicate the situation trying to explain about tattoos), and only partially succeeded.

She had to get used to the sight of dragons, especially Hiccup's favorites, wandering around with words scrawled on them in mud or whatever else was at hand to write with. She also had to get used to occasionally waking up to find words, mostly _MAMA_, staining her own clothes or skin. Toothless in particular was now constantly covered from nose to tail with runes, most often _HICCUP'S_ (Valka had reminded Hiccup again about the possessive signifier), _MINE_, _HALF OF ME, _and _TOOTHLESS_.

One night, while Valka was asleep, Hiccup presented himself before the king. "Hello, King," he said carefully, mentally echoing so that the Bewilderbeast could understand him. "I am...camouflaged. I am... My **body** is human. I will go to humans. I will hide with them. My Toothless will hide away from them."

Frost was breathed over him, and he smiled.

o.o.o

Author's Notes: Many humans rely so much on verbal or written communication that they don't consciously acknowledge nonverbal-or-written communication. It's the same with dragons, in their own way - scent is such an important part of their communication that, in its absence, they have a hard time being sure of the truth. Subconsciously, they'll know that HiccTooth are obviously still two halves, but when Hiccup has lost all his scents, for them it's like, "Uh...they are a two-halves pair, right? But they don't smell like it so I don't know, I'm confused..." It's like someone with OCD who _knows_ that they turned off the stove and locked the door before they left, but their brain won't actually believe it, which is why they feel compelled to drive back home just to check (and find that, sure enough, the door was locked and the stove was off).

I did not plan the "dragon graffiti" at all; Hiccup came up with that all on his own as I was typing (of course he hadn't breathed a word of it to me in my imagination earlier ^^; ). One side effect is that Hybrid-Toothless is now most likely going to be covered with writing for the rest of his life. X'''''D (_He_ won't care, but it's going to be disconcerting to my revised mental images of him until I get used to it. ^^; )

If all goes according to plan (hah!), the next chapter should be the one where Hiccup FINALLY makes it back to Eret's castle. I haven't written much of it, though, so my muse might very well decide to take another few months' vacation before I update this fic again. :/

I'm so sorry, I meant to catch up on e-mail, but I got sucked into another obsession for _three whole days_ and got almost absolutely nothing done, even though two of those days were precious days off from work and other leaving-the-house obligations. *cries* I'm hoping I can clean up my act and get productive again now, but I hate myself and it's so discouraging when I let myself get wrecked like this. orz


End file.
